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.
High odds mean that if you’ve placed a bet, you’ll win a high payout; and low odds mean that if you’ve placed a bet, you’ll win a lower payout. What are low odds? Low odds are something like 2-to-1 against. These odds mean something is somewhat likely to happen. The odds are low that Squiggly will ask for a chocolate dessert. Squiggly loves chocolate. The odds are low that there will be an earthquake in California in the next decade. If you had made a 2-to-1 bet for $1 that Squiggly would ask for a chocolate dessert, and he did,…
When people tell me their pet peeves, they often mention the phrase “could care less.” They claim it should be “couldn’t care less.” “It’s illogical. If you could care less, you still care. Don’t people get it?” they say. Celebrities have even jumped on the cranky bandwagon. Both David Mitchell and John Cleese have made popular YouTube videos ranting about the illogical phrase “could care less.” Interestingly, both men are British comedians, and they’re both complaining, in particular, about Americans who use the phrase. Do Americans Say ‘Could Care Less’? Are Americans really more likely to say they could…
Grammar Pop is a mobile game originally developed for iOS devices. Now, for the first time, you can play it right in your browser on a tablet, laptop, or desktop! For tips and the answers to more questions, visit the main Grammar Pop FAQ page. In the meantime, you may have some questions about how we categorize parts of speech in the game. Articles Articles are short words that come before nouns. There are two types of articles, but we just call them all articles in Grammar Pop. The indirect articles are a and an. A comes before words that start with a consonant sound, and an comes…
Spending time with family is a big part of the holidays, and thinking about family reminded me of a few tricky little quirks of family names and family words that can confuse people. So today I’ll tell you how to make family names plural (even those that end in “x,” “y,” and “z”), how to refer to more than one brother- or sister-in-law, and how to formally address more than one man and more than one woman. How to make family names plural First let’s figure out how to make family names plural. Family names are like brand names: you don’t change…
I recently got a listener question about “more than” and “over”: ”Hi, Mignon. My name is Andrea. About 20 years ago, my husband Brian and I were working as reporters at a local newspaper. For the style guide they were very specific when talking about an amount of money such as more than or less than $1 million. We were not allowed to use the words “over” or “under” because they signified a position, a physical position in space like over or under a bridge. Recently, I’ve noticed that a lot of news outlets and television shows are using the…
Today’s topic is single quotation marks versus double quotation marks. How to Use Double Quotation Marks Most people think of double quotation marks as being for quotations, which they are, but they also have other legitimate uses. For example, double quotation marks are often used around the title of a short work such as a magazine article or an episode of a TV show. The “Darmok” episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” is one of my favorites. The rules for longer works, such as books, are tricky. The Associated Press uses quotation marks, but the Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Handbook recommend italics.…
In 1886, a lexicographer named Walter Skeat first used the phrase “ghost words” to describe words that he said had “no real existence.” In other words, ghost words are words that weren’t real to begin with—they made it into the dictionary because of an error or misunderstanding. Gravy For example, it appears that “gravy” only became a word because a 14th-century translator misread a French cookbook. (1, 2) In Old French, the word was spelled with an N: “grane” (also sometimes spelled “grain”), and it was related to the word “grain,” which according to the Oxford English Dictionary meant “anything used…
A listener named Katie wrote in with this question: How do you show possession to more than one noun? For example, would you say, “Tom and Jerry’s TV show” and “Ryan and my anniversary”? The latter looks so odd that I end up avoiding it entirely and going with a longer and less efficient, “Ryan and I are celebrating our anniversary on…” Thanks for the question, Katie! What you’re asking about is called “compound possession” or “joint possession.” I’ll start with the first part of your question. 1. With Nouns, How You Write a Compound Possessive Depends on Whether Things…
A couple of weeks ago when I did the show on Esperanto, I mentioned that Dr. Zamenhof wrote a primer for his new international language, and a listener named Richard wrote in to suggest that I should have pronounced that word “primer,” and he was right. I was not aware of the difference—I just thought “primer” was a kind of pretentious way of pronouncing the word, but it turns out that a primer and a "primmer" are two different things, especially in American English. “Primer” with a short I, pronounced like “primmer” and meaning an introductory book, is the older…
A listener named Milton asked why Australians use the present perfect tense for the past tense. For example, he said Australians would say, “He has skulked,” instead of “He skulked.” That’s the present perfect tense: the verb “has” or “have” combined with the past participle: “has skulked.” And somewhat confusingly, even though it’s called the “present perfect” tense, it’s usually used to talk about something that happened at an unspecified time in the past. I’ve spent significant time with a few Australians over the years—my lab mate in grad school was from Adelaide, and a good friend is married to…