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.
Apostrophes are one of the more confounding punctuation marks. If you search for signs with “grammar errors” online, most of the results will likely include an apostrophe error (which is actually a punctuation error, not a grammar error, but I digress). Here are some of the most common ways to use apostrophes—and some interesting rare cases. 1. For Possessive Nouns When you consider apostrophes, the first word that probably comes to mind is possessive because our grade-school teachers taught us that apostrophes make things possessive—more specifically, apostrophes make nouns possessive. We use apostrophes to write about Oprah’s new recommendation, J.K. Rowling’s new book, and…
When someone has eaten something very fast have they “wolfed” or “woofed” it down? @GrammarGirl — Daniel Coe (@DanielJCoe) September 28, 2015 Where We Get ‘Wolf Down’ The right choice is to say people wolfed down their food, as if they were eating like a ravenous wolf in the wild. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, wolf was first used this way in the book The Seven Sons of Mammon in 1862, where the line reads “[She] used to wolf her food with her fingers.” Why ‘Woof Down’ Is an Eggcorn To say someone woofed down a meal…
This chart from Grammar Girl Presents the Ultimate Writing Guide for Students gives examples of the 15 most common ways to use a comma. Some of the items represent style choices instead of rules, such as how to use a comma in a list, but when you’re making a simple list, you have to make choices! We hope you find it useful. Right-click or hit control-click to print just the image. Related Articles Commas: Oxford, Appositive, and Nonrestrictive The Comma Splice When to Use a Comma Before ‘Because’ Commas with Participial Phrases
Two readers recently asked whether they need to repeat a number in parentheses after they write out the word. Note that I did not write two (2) readers. Putting the number in parentheses after the word is unnecessary and no style guide that I'm aware of calls for it. It has a sense of legalese to it, but from what I can tell, it's not even required in legal writing anymore. Garner's Modern American Usage says it was originally done in legal writing to prevent fraudulent alterations. I guess if you had to alter both the word and the…
Two of my friends (Trent Armstrong, the former Modern Manners Guy, and Hyatt Bass, author of the novel The Embers) asked about the word yay and why people so often seem to incorrectly use yea or yeah instead. Yay Yay is an exclamation that shows feelings such as excitement, joy, happiness, triumph, and approval. The origin is fuzzy though. Some dictionaries say it came from yeah, but most seem to think it evolved from the adverbial yay in the phrases yay big and yay high, but then the Oxford English Dictionary says that the yay in yay high probably came from yea. And you wonder why people are…
Tara L. from New Jersey asked, "Are you smitten BY someone or smitten WITH someone?" 'Smitten With' or 'Smitten By'? Both smitten by and smitten with appear to be acceptable. Smitten with may be slightly more common, but not by much. If you feel the need to make a distinction, being smitten by someone could imply some sort of action on the part of the adored person; being smitten with someone could imply that he or she is unaware of your affection and has done nothing to encourage it—but those aren't hard-and-fast rules. 'Smitten' Comes from 'Smite' Although I…
Today’s topic is Yoda’s grammar. Yes, Yoda from Star Wars. Why would I talk about Yoda? Well, a couple of weeks ago there was a Star Wars marathon on TV, and a listener named Pat asked if Yoda is speaking “real” English when he says things like “Powerful, you have become.” It was such a fun question I couldn’t resist, but it’s outside my area of expertise because it’s more of a linguistics question than a grammar or usage question. Fortunately, people who know about linguistics listen to this podcast, and I was able to tap in to their expertise to…
Last week, when I was grading my college students’ midterms, I noticed that more than half the students didn’t seem to know the difference between everyday (one word) and every day (two words). Everyday (one word) means “common.” You let the kids set the table with the everyday dishes, not the good china. Every day (two words) means “each day.” Every day I keep hoping I’ll feel better.
Doms wrote in with an interesting question that touches on both Latin and global English. He said, “In the Philippines, monthsary is widely used to refer to a ‘month anniversary.’ It is not a word, of course. What is a better term for marking an occasion that is celebrated every month?” Doms’s question brings up what’s called “world English,” “international English,” “global English,” or “Globish.” We’re more interconnected today than we were 20 years ago, so we are more likely to hear other people’s versions of English today, and there are also more English speakers outside the countries that people…
Wrongly is an adverb, and the word comes up a lot in news stories: people are wrongly arrested, wrongly jailed, wrongly convicted, and wrongly released. Some people believe that since we already have the adverb wrongly, it must be the only choice. But wrong can also be an adverb—and a noun, verb, and an adjective. (Who knew there were so many ways to go wrong?) Most often, wrong sounds right when it comes after a verb, as in Things have gone wrong, You heard wrong, and You're doing it wrong. Wrongly tends to sound better when it comes before a verb, as in wrongly accused. Image courtesy of Shutterstock. Get…