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.
If you follow my YouTube channel, you will have noticed that I’ve posted a few simple videos about how to get started with sentence diagramming. The comments I get are funny because one will be someone saying they love diagramming sentences and the next one will be someone saying they hate diagramming sentences. It seems to bring out strong feelings. Should Students Be Required to Learn Sentence Diagramming? Some people have asked whether I think diagramming is an important skill for students to learn, and I actually don’t. I just think it’s fun, like a different kind of word…
You’ll remember that a couple of weeks ago, I had a piece from Neal Whitman about homecoming being called HoCo, and Neal was also kind enough to point out that although I wrote about the words alum and alumni in some of my Grammar Girl books, I’ve never covered them on the podcast or on the website, and this would be a good time of year to do so… because alumni go to homecoming. Or should that be alums go to homecoming? First, let’s deal with the singular forms. ‘Alumnus’ and ‘Alumna’ As you may have guessed, these words to…
Today’s topic is “further” versus “farther.” Almost every week someone asks me to explain the difference between “further” and “farther.” I know you are all looking up “further vs farther,” and when I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show, a production assistant grabbed me backstage while my head was still spinning and begged me to give her a way to remember which word to use. So today, I’ll try to help you with this continuing conundrum. ‘Further’ Versus ‘Farther’ The quick and dirty tip is to use “farther” for physical distance and “further” for metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It’s easy…
When you’re trying to figure out whether to use who or whom, it helps to know the difference between subjects and objects because you use who when you’re referring to the subject of a clause and whom when you’re referring to the object of a clause. In other words, who is a subject pronoun and whom is an object pronoun. 4 Ways to Remember Who vs. Whom Subjects and Objects Just “Whom” Just “Who” The “Himlich Maneuver” Let’s explore each a little further. 1. Subject and Objects The subject of a sentence is doing something, and the object of a…
A couple of months ago I used the word hung wrong in the podcast about the man who invented the guillotine, so today I’ll review the proper use in case I confused people. The standard quip is that curtains are hung and people are hanged. It’s not quite that cut-and-dried*—some of my reference books say hung isn’t wrong, just less customary, when referring to past executions, and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary says that hung is becoming more common—but the majority of my books agree that the standard English past tense of hang is hanged when you are talking about…
Have you ever wondered why we have two past tense forms of the verb to light? Should you say Squiggly lit citronella candles, or Squiggly lighted citronella candles? Maybe you’ve even wondered whether one is wrong. Lighted sounds kind of weird in that sentence, right? ‘Light’ Has Two Past Tense Forms: ‘Lit’ and ‘Lighted’ Both words are correct. Light is one of those rare English words that has two acceptable past-tense forms. Lighted is what we call a regular verb because you make it past tense by adding -ed to the end. Lit is what we call an irregular verb because you change the spelling to make it past tense; you don’t just add -ed. English Verbs…
Many people mistakenly thought that “inflammable” meant “resistant to burning,” which it doesn’t. The ‘-in’ prefix has multiple meanings The “in-” prefix usually has a negative meaning, as in “indelible,” which means “can’t be deleted” and “indefinite,” which means “not defined.” But the “in-” prefix has other uses too. For example, it can mean “in, into; to, towards,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. That’s what it’s doing in words such as “intoxicate” and “indent” — it’s describing metaphorical movement toward being “toxicated” and “dented” — and that’s what it’s doing in “inflame” (the base of “inflammable,” which essentially means…
This tip is essentially an add on to last week’s show about the difference between affect and effect because once people get that difference, they often ask, “What about affective and effective?” Effective The good news is that it’s easy: Effective is almost always the right choice. That’s the word you want in sentences like these: Squiggly is a particularly effective leader. Squiggly and Aardvark had an effective meeting. Effective immediately, we’ll have chocolate at every meeting. Affective Affective with an A has more specialized meanings that relate to psychology and emotions, just like affect the noun that we talked about…
I get asked whether to use affect or effect all the time, and it is by far the most requested grammar topic, so I have a few memory tricks to help you remember. Before we get to the memory trick though, I want to explain the difference between the two words. What Is the Difference Between ‘Affect’ and ‘Effect’? The majority of the time you use affect as a verb and effect as a noun. Affect can either mean “to influence” or “to act in a way that you don’t feel.” Effect typically means “a result.” ‘Affect’ and ‘Effect’ Are Pronounced Differently The…
Did you know there are two ways to pronounce the word the, and the rule that governs which pronunciation you choose is kind of like how you choose between a and an? I didn’t know this until I started the Grammar Girl podcast and people wrote in to complain that I was doing it wrong. Then I checked the Merriam-Webster dictionary (because you’d be amazed how many times people tell me I’m doing something wrong without checking first that know what they’re talking about), and lo and behold, they were right! There are pronunciation guidelines that I never learned. At…