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.
It’s the time of year when I eat a lot more dessert than I usually do — the pies, the cookies, the cakes — and then take extra long walks trying to work it all off. And as a word person, it reminds me of two commonly confused words: “dessert” and “desert.” Ask any teacher or editor, and they’ll tell you they see these words misspelled a lot. The meanings and origins of ‘desert’ and ‘dessert’ Let’s get them right: A dessert is something you eat ― usually sweet and usually at the end of a meal. It comes from a…
Even award-winning authors have grammar preferences and peeves. When reading a great book by a great author, do you — like me — find yourself thinking, “You must have a word you always misspell too. What do people say that bugs you? What is your favorite word?” I was excited to hear what Daniel Stashower had to say about his grammar loves and challenges. Daniel is a New York Times bestselling author who recently released his historical true-crime story “American Demon.” If you’re looking for a thrilling tale of a sadistic killer hiding in plain sight, check out “American Demon.”…
A Twitter meme about the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is bringing me joy this week. For example, Amy Louise with the handle @Amylouioc wrote “Fantasy is when Irish words are randomly thrown into conversation and Sci-Fi is when all street signs are in Japanese”. Fantasy is when Irish words are randomly thrown into conversation and Sci-Fi is when all street signs are in Japanese hope that helps — Amy Louise (@Amylouioc) September 25, 2022 They’re super funny, but also on target and rooted in what we’ve talked about in the Grammar Girl podcastclick on the link before: Readers expect…
When adults are ambushed with the concept of grammar, for example, when they meet someone who goes by the name Grammar Girl, they often reach into the depths of their grade-school memories and come up with something along the lines of “Don’t split infinitives, right?” Indeed. Splitting infinitives is a grammar topic, but the “rule” you may have learned against splitting infinitives isn’t as hard-and-fast as you might imagine. Infinitives are the two-word forms of verbs such as to read, to write, and to illustrate. to read to write to illustrate What is a split infinitive? If you want to remember…
Today we’re going to talk about regionalisms. Mostly about the “needs washed” quirk of Pittsburghese, but I may throw in some other fun ones at the end. Whenever I give radio interviews, especially when the station is in the Midwest, callers almost always ask questions like this one from Douglas: The other day I heard a co-worker say, “My car needs washed.” I THINK she should have said, “My car needs to be washed” or “I need to get my car washed” or perhaps even “My car needs washing.” What do you think? I think Douglas’ co-worker almost certainly grew…
“Backward” and “backwards” can both be adjectives and adverbs, so you can say, “Squiggly jumped backward when Aardvark shouted, ‘Boo!’”—that’s using “backward” as an adverb. It’s describing the way Squiggly is moving, the same way you might say he jumped frantically or jumped high. And you can say, “Grammar Girl wishes her Xbox had backward compatibility,”—that’s using “backward” as an adjective. It’s describing the type of compatibility I wish I had, the same way you might say a fabulous couple has perfect compatibility. Adjectives: ‘Backward’ and ‘backwards’ As an adjective — in that “backward compatibility” way — Garner’s Modern English Usage says…
When you’re writing a title, you’re confronted with a shocking number of formatting options. How you decide to handle capitalization is up to you; it’s a style choice. But all the major style guides make recommendations. Here are some of the major styles I’ve seen: 1. Capitalize every word of the headline. Maybe the simplest possible style is to just capitalize every single word, and that’s what Buzzfeed does. 2. Capitalize the headline like a sentence. Another really simple style is often called “sentence style” because it’s how you write sentences. Only capitalize the first letter of the first word…
Researching the word “funnest” and its close relation “funner” turned out to be a lot less fun than I had hoped. The opinions are so varied that I became completely engrossed and frustrated and forgot to call my mother on her birthday. Sorry, Mom. ‘Fun,’ the noun First, the easy part. Everyone agrees that “fun” was originally just a noun. For example, you could say, “We had fun,” which is the grammatical equivalent of “We had cake.” Fun is more of an abstract thing than cake, but they’re both nouns. People at the same party may disagree about whether they…
Today’s topic is the difference between abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms. Abbreviations and acronyms Any shortened form of a word is an abbreviation, for example, “etc.” for “etcetera” and “Oct.” for “October”; but acronyms are a special kind of abbreviation, such as “ROFL” (rolling on the floor laughing) and “OPEC” (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), that can be pronounced as words. This makes them a subset of abbreviations. All acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms. Initialisms Initialisms are another type of abbreviation. They are often confused with acronyms because they are made up of letters, so they look…
Here’s a listener: Hi, Grammar Girl. This is Patti from Houston… Patti and her friends are debating about the serial comma — the comma that comes before the final conjunction in a list. Here’s a sentence that uses a serial comma: “According to the website Box Office Mojo, the top-grossing movies of all time in the United States are currently ‘Avatar,’ ‘Titanic,’ and ‘The Dark Knight.'” Whether to use the serial comma is a style issue, which is why Patti and her friends ended up in a debate. Do you always have to use serial commas? Although the British are…