Author: Mignon Fogarty
Mignon Fogarty
Mignon Fogarty is the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips and the author of seven books on language, including the New York Times bestseller "Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing." She is an inductee in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and the show is a five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. She has appeared as a guest expert on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the Today Show. Her popular LinkedIn Learning courses help people write better to communicate better. Find her on Mastodon.
Most of us know about the big differences, such as Americans spelling “color” without a U and the British spelling “colour” with a U, but these were differences I didn’t know about before I visited the UK. 1. ’RV Park’ Versus ‘Caravan’ First, I noticed that what I’d call an “RV park” was called a “caravan park” in England. “Caravan” sounds much more romantic to me than “RV,” which stands for “recreational vehicle.” A caravan sounds like something merchants would use to deliver spices or nobles would use to travel the countryside, whereas “recreational vehicle” sounds like a term a…
You may occasionally hear or read an objection to the phrase “more importantly.” You can ignore it (unless you are writing a cover letter or some other document where you’ll be judged without the chance to defend yourself). “More important” and “more importantly” are both grammatically acceptable and have been in use for decades. It’s unclear which one came first. A Google Ngram search, which shows how often words are used in published books that have been scanned by Google, shows “more important” as much older and more popular, but the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says “more importantly” is…
I lost the name of the person who asked me why we call the fermented sauce we use in Caesar salad, deviled eggs, and bloody marys “Worcestershire sauce,” but it turns out the answer is simple: it was first bottled in Worcester county in west central England. The story goes that a British nobleman came back from a stint at the East India Company with a taste for the sauce and commissioned two local chemists, John Lea and William Perrins, to recreate it for him in the 1830s. Supposedly, Lea and Perrins also made some sauce for themselves, but they…
A listener named Mwalimu on Facebook asked, Which is correct? “This is one of the novels that has made a mark in my life,” or “This is one of the novels that have made a mark in my life”? Someone asks me a question like this every six months or so, and I always have to look up the answer because, for the life of me, I can never remember whether a sentence like this calls for a singular verb or a plural verb. I actually have a little bookmark in one of my usage guides on the page about…
My life is super exciting, so Friday night I was looking through the galleys of the new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, and I noticed a little change from the previous edition. In the past, Chicago said to lowercase “generation X,” even though other style books said to capitalize it. With the new edition in September, Chicago is going to be in line with the Associated Press, making editors’ lives easier: capitalize “Generation X.” And if you call us “Gen Xers” on second reference, capitalize that too. But knowing when to capitalize the name of a generation isn’t…
Sometimes directional terms such as south are capitalized and sometimes they aren’t. Directions: Lowercase When you’re describing a direction, south is lowercase: The map is behind a secret door on the south wall. We drove south for 20 miles before we found a gas station. Directional Region Names: Capitalized When you’re naming a region, directions are capitalized. For example, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Nashville are all in the South, not the south. One hint, although it’s not 100% definitive, is that if you can put the word the in front of the name, it’s often capitalized: He’s from the Pacific…
Once you learn about comma splices, you notice them everywhere, and a listener named Jo has started noticing them. She wrote, “Comma splices are the rage on the internet these days. Can you write about them sometime?” Well, I have written about them, but it was four years ago, so it’s definitely time for a refresher. https://twitter.com/FashionSpire/status/733077368135245824?s=20&t=aJCYa49UULFfmB8VYpV0lQ How to Use Commas Commas are always tricky because there are so many different ways you can use them, but one of the most common ways to use commas is to separate two main clauses that are connected by a coordinating conjunction. That just…
Two weeks ago, we talked about comma splices—errors that happen when you join two main clauses with just a comma–but you can make the same kind of mistake if you aren’t careful when joining two main clauses with conjunctive adverbs such as however, therefore, furthermore, and nevertheless. Two Main Clauses Remember, a main clause, also known as an independent clause, is just something that could be a complete sentence if it were all by itself. If you’re joining two main clauses with a conjunctive adverb, you need a semicolon before that adverb, and a comma after. That adverb needs to…
Back in April after the style guide updates that came out of the American Copy Editors Society meeting, I told you that both the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style now say it’s OK to use they as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, at least in some cases. Liam on Twitter had a great question that I wasn’t able to answer at the time: He wrote The Associated Press has been mostly silent on the issue. It’s not covered in the singular they entry, and the primary advice in the Q&A section is to avoid themself by rewriting your…
I used to be a terrible cook. One problem was that I would get distracted and end up burning things a lot, but in such cases, should I say dinner is burned or should I say it’s burnt? Why do we have two forms of that word? The Verb: ‘Burned’ Versus ‘Burnt’ Burned and burnt are both acceptable past-tense forms of the verb to burn, but which one you use depends on where you live because the verb burned is the much more common form in the United States and Canada. Burned and burnt are used more interchangeably as a…