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.
First, let’s get one thing straight: you are on TENTERhooks, not TENDERhooks. To be on tenterhooks is to be filled with painful or anxious anticipation or suspense, such as when you’re waiting for the result of an important medical test. Where We Get the Word ‘Tenterhooks’ To figure out what a tenterhook is, we have to know that long ago manufacturers kept freshly milled woolen cloth from shrinking while it dried by stretching it on a wooden frame called a tenter. It comes from the Latin word tentus, which means “to stretch.” The word ‘tenterhooks’ comes from the metal…
Quotations can bring your writing to life — the reader imagines someone saying the words?but quotations are also vexing to format. Not only do you have to follow different rules depending on what other punctuation marks you mix with your quotation marks, but people in different countries also follow different rules, so you may see quotation marks handled differently in high-quality publications from different countries. Quotation Marks with Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes First, let’s review the easy (but rare) stuff: semicolons, colons, and dashes always go outside quotation marks: Bob snorted and said, “I don’t believe in zombies”— right before…
A listener named Kat says her holiday joy is crushed every time she hears the Christmas carol “Joy to the World.” She asks: Why do we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come,” rather than “Joy to the world, the Lord has come”? Not wanting Kat to face the holidays with grammar consternation, I went on a quest to figure out what’s going on with these lyrics. Archaic English It actually turned out to be a pretty tough question, but I eventually discovered that the phrase the Lord is come uses an archaic form of English that was…
I’m going to tackle this in parts. “Into” versus “in” “Into” versus “in to” Sample sentences “Into” Versus “In” When you use in, you’re indicating position. Her phone was in her pocket. When you use into in a sentence, you’re indicating movement; an action is happening. She stuffed her phone into her backpack. “Into” Versus “In to” Into is a preposition that has many definitions, but they all generally relate to direction and motion. On the other hand, in by itself can be an adverb, preposition, adjective, or noun. To by itself is a preposition or an adverb or part…
If you watched the children’s program Sesame Street growing up, you probably recognized the little bit I sang earlier. “Phenomenon, do do do do do.” Well, it turns out, I was remembering it wrong. In my memory, they were saying “phenomena,” but when I watched the clip on YouTube while I was working on this article, I realized they were saying a nonsense word: “manamanah.” Still, whenever I heard the word “phenomena,” I think of that Sesame Street skit, and I’m nearly certain I’ve heard other people refer to it too. And if you need a good laugh, the video…
Many people were taught that they shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. Today, however, most language experts don’t abide by this “rule”—it’s often called a myth. (Read more at Ending a Sentence with a Preposition.) However, after I posted the article about ending sentences with prepositions, I was surprised by how many people asked if it is OK to start a sentence with a preposition. I’ve never heard a rule forbidding that practice. Prepositional Phrases at the Beginning of a Sentence Prepositional phrases at the beginning of sentences are common and grammatically correct. Consider these examples: On the other…
Oh, English. There are so many different kinds of errors that sometimes it seems overwhelming, but today, we’re going to talk about errors you can laugh at—errors like thinking Creedence Clearwater Revival sang There’s a bathroom on the right instead of There’s a bad moon on the rise and saying something is a little fit bunny instead of a little bit funny. (1) Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by the book, Grimacia. A Nice Town. But Painted Brown, the story of a girl named Sabrina who lives in a town that has no imagination. Sabrina is smart and knows…
Every once in a while, I get questions about word pairs such as “wood” and “wooden” or “wool” and “woolen.” Sometimes it’s a commenter insisting that you can’t wear a wool sweater—that you can only wear a woolen sweater—and sometimes it’s just someone wondering whether he should write about a wood bench or a wooden bench. One reason for the confusion is that although we have adjectives in English, we can also use nouns as adjectives. When we do so, they’re called attributive nouns. When Do Nouns Act Like Adjectives? Some nouns often act like adjectives, some only do it…
Last week Dale Seiler on Twitter sent me a screenshot of a Garmin ad that had a strange and unnecessary comma in the middle of the tagline. It reads “Today’s record, is tomorrow’s motivation,” and that comma violates one of the hard-and-fast comma rules: never put a comma between a subject and its verb.* Commas: Are There Firm Rules or Just Guidelines? Commas have a lot of different uses, and that’s part of what makes them confusing. Another thing that makes them confusing is that some things are hard-and-fast rules—like don’t put a comma between a subject and a verb—and…
Sponsor: Audible.com is the Internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, including fiction, non-fiction and periodicals. For a free audiobook of your choice, go to this link. I’m often asked questions about what pronoun you should use when you’re writing about a company or a group such as a board of directors. Is it a company who makes jelly beans or is it a company that makes jelly beans, and was it the board of directors who voted against puce jelly beans or the board of directors that voted against puce jelly…