Author: Mignon Fogarty

Since 2006, Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl, has delivered trusted tips and fun facts about the English language through her Grammar Girl podcast, newsletter, books, and courses. This is the style guide we have developed internally for our own use, and we thought readers might also find it useful. Many style guides exist, and they serve different purposes for different needs. The Grammar Girl Style Guide below will help you find answers to common grammar and English usage topics that we have needed to decide how to handle. Although these topics are often covered in major style guides,…

Recently, you heard me talk about a “king-size” mattress from Casper, and that reminded me that a listener named Louie had asked me whether he should write about “small and mid-size businesses” or “small and mid-sized businesses.” The short answer is that the better choice is “size,” not “sized”—”king-size” and “mid-size”—although some dictionaries list “king-sized” and “mid-sized” as alternatives. Should you hyphenate ‘king-size’ and ‘mid-size’? As is often the case with hyphens, the answer isn’t as clear—”king-size” usually appears hyphenated, but “mid-size” is routinely seen with and without a hyphen, and some dictionaries show it hyphenated and others don’t. Hyphenate “king-size,”…

The name of the coronavirus disease that emerged in late 2019 is not capitalized because most disease names aren’t unless they are named after a person or a region. For example, influenza, diabetes, and cancer also aren’t capitalized. The other official name for coronavirus disease is COVID-19, which is capitalized because it’s an abbreviation for “COronaVIrus Disease-2019.” Diseases named after regions are capitalized Diseases that are named after regions are capitalized. For example, Ebola is the name of a river in Zaire,* and it was near the Ebola River that the virus first caused disease in humans. Thus, the disease became known…

Lately, it seems as if politicians are constantly calculating whether they should toe the party line, or not. But is that “toe the line” (T-O-E) or “tow the line” (T-O-W)? You can imagine logical reasons for it to be either, but the right choice is “toe the line,” like your toes on your footsies. One of the first examples in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an 1834 book called “Peter Simple” written by the naval officer and novelist Frederick Marryat. The line reads “He desired us to ‘toe a line’, which means to stand in a row.” “Toe the…

Today Bonnie Mills helps us talk about three punctuation marks: one you undoubtedly know how to use, another you possibly misuse, and yet another you’ve likely never used. If you’ve ever wondered when to favor parentheses over square brackets and when to stick in a pair of curly braces, read on. Parentheses You’re probably well versed in the basics of how to use those sideways eyebrow thingies, better known as parentheses, but the details can get tricky. First, remember that a pair of them is called “parentheses,” but a single one is a “parenthesis.” For now, let’s just say that parentheses mainly…

Should you start a sentence with “there is” or “there are”?   Have you ever heard it’s bad to start sentences with “there are,” “there is,” and “it is”? These phrases can be part of what are called expletive sentences. And no! I’m not talking about swearing! Swearing and expletives The word “expletive” comes from Latin that means “to fill,” and in English, it’s come to mean something that takes up space without adding anything. The swear-word meaning goes back to the 1600s and may have been popularized by Sir Walter Scott in the early 1800s. And it was definitely…

Today I’m going to beg the question. When I do radio interviews, callers often ask me about the phrase “begs the question.” They often hear “begs the question” used to mean “raises the question,” and if they took a formal logic class in college or had a particularly diligent English teacher, they think the “raises the question” meaning is wrong. But it’s much more complicated than that. The right way to use ‘begs the question’ “Begs the question” is a term that originally comes from formal logic. It’s a translation of the Latin phrase “petitio principii,” which Merriam-Webster says is…

The human brain is wired to look for patterns. Patterns like the golden ratio found in art and nature are pleasing to the eye, and patterns in writing can make your words more pleasing and memorable to your readers. Speech writers know all about patterns because many common rhetorical devices rely on patterns. Some of the most famous pieces of writing use patterns, and that’s probably one of the reasons we remember them. From Julius Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I conquered,” to Martin Luther King Junior’s “I have a dream” speech, patterns have helped speakers deliver a strong message.…

Ever been chided for doing something that you know isn’t wrong? Your brother-in-law insists that guacamole is made only with lemon—never lime—and that you’ve ruined it with your tiny green citrus. His mama taught him to make it with lemon, and he doesn’t care how much you cite Alton Brown. The same goes when you’re writing at work. Although modern grammarians and reference books firmly assert that all five of the “rules” I’m going to give you are actually baseless, they’ve been taught as hard and fast in many schools—especially to people old enough to be your boss. So read up.…

Holly Hutchings and I made this extra special, multiple-interview episode about the classic children’s cartoon “Schoolhouse Rock” five years ago, but we never released it on the podcast feed because of copyright concerns about the music. But when I heard last week it was the 50th anniversary of the show, I knew you had to hear it — especially since we have an interview with one of the creators, George Newall, who died back in October. So Holly stripped out the music and remastered the show. I’m delighted so many of you can now hear the story. In this Grammar…