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.
Although we often capitalize a country or city name when it’s part of a food name, that’s not always the case, and it’s typically not the case with french fries. Most sources say to keep it lowercase. The reasoning given by the AP Stylebook writers is that french describes the style of cut and doesn’t refer directly to the country. The Chicago Manual of Style also recommends keeping french lowercase because french isn’t being used to literally refer to the country. They give swiss cheese as another example—it’s lowercase because it’s not made in Switzerland. It’s named after a cheese called Emmental,…
? Wrong Word affect/effect, lay/lie, sit/set, who/whom, toward/towards, etc. ? Vague Pronoun Reference Confusing: Bob annoyed Larry, but that didn’t stop him from asking for a meeting. Clear: Bob annoyed Larry, but that didn’t stop Larry from asking for a meeting. More about vague pronouns. ? Lack of Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Frequently Disparaged: Everyone withdrew their money. Uncontroversial: Everyone withdrew his or her money. Uncontroversial: People withdrew their money. More about they and their as gender-neutral pronouns. ? Missing or Unnecessary Capitalization Capitalize proper nouns: The names of things, such as the Golden Gate Bridge. Lowercase common nouns: Descriptions, such as that famous bridge.…
Commas are a workhorse punctuation mark. They’re like the people you ride with on the subway every day, the delivery guy who comes by your office, and the parents of your children’s classmates — you see them so often that you think you know them just from sheer exposure. Rarely does a paragraph go by in which you don’t encounter a comma. But like those familiar strangers, commas are complex. You might get a sense of them from casual observation, but to truly know them, you have to dig deeper. Let’s get to know the comma a little better. The…
Blue=one person has heard the phrase “cash money.” Red=one person has not heard the phrase “cash money.” I first heard the phrase cash money after I moved to Reno, Nevada, and I thought it might be a casino thing because I always heard it during drawings when I would go to a certain casino for lunch. The announcer had a lot of time to fill, so he’d go on and on saying things like “Who wants to win the cash money?” and “We’re giving away cash money every three minutes,” and so on. It sounded odd to me because…
You’re probably seeing the word “canceled” a lot right now, but should it be spelled with one L or two? Well, it depends on where you live. “Canceled” with one L is more common in American English, and “cancelled” with two L’s is more common in British English, but these aren’t hard-and-fast rules either. A Google Ngram search of published books shows that both spellings are in use in both countries. Is it ‘canceled’ or ‘cancelled’? The AP Stylebook, used by many American news outlets, recommends “canceled” with one L. “Cancelled” with two L’s is clearly the dominant form in British English, which my Canadian and Australian friends…
Today’s topic is units of measure—those words and symbols that come after numbers. Put a Space Between Numbers and Units of Measure This first point may seem self-evident: you put a space between the number and the unit of measure. Even though it seems obvious, I’m telling you because I’ve seen people do it wrong, and there are also exceptions to the rule. For example, if you want to say you threw a ball 100 feet, there is a space between the number 100 and the whole word feet. Obvious, right? But what if you use the abbreviation ft. instead…
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…