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.
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…
A few years ago, a man named D. Chap wrote in and said, “I was thinking about the words dreamed and dreamt. I've heard it used both ways and I've seen it written both ways, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me about what the proper usage would be if there is one. You don't say creamt when you're trying to say creamed, or the same thing with gleamed and gleamt; you never hear those. So I was wondering what the proper usage was for dreamed versus dreamt.” The reason he is confused is that dreamed and…
Typeface Versus Font First, we have to talk about the difference between a typeface and a font, because what we’re really talking about here is the names of typefaces. Think of it this way: the font is a small part of a typeface. If we’re talking about Times New Roman, Times New Roman 12 point bold italic is the font, and the typeface is the collection of all the fonts that make up the entire Times New Roman set. Today, however, many people think of letter styles as fonts because it’s the word you see on all your software…
Mark E. from Portland, Oregon said he regularly comes across the phrase chomping at the bit, but he believes it should be champing at the bit. The original phrase is, indeed, champing at the bit, but chomping at the bit emerged in America in the 1930s according to the Oxford English Dictionary and chomp has overtaken champ in common use. A Google web search for chomping at the bit returns about twice as many results as a search for champing at the bit. Champing at the bit is still used just slightly more often than chomping at the bit in…