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.
Brandon Sanderson is a #1 New York Times bestselling fantasy author with more than 30 books, which have been published in 35 languages. In this interview, we talked about his Newest book, Rhythm of War. Co-hosting of the Writing Excuses podcast. BYU writing class. Book tours. Livestreaming. Views on the interrobang (more than you may imagine!). Process for naming characters and places in his novels (funny stories about names gone wrong!). Special considerations for audiobooks. Orwellian approach to writing and prose, in particular. Struggles with “lay” and “lie” and double words such as “had had.” Plans for the future. You can…
One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is whether it’s acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. I know many of you were taught that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, but that’s a myth. In fact, I consider it one of the top ten grammar myths because so many people believe it’s true, but nearly all grammarians disagree, at least in some cases. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) So before I lose you, let’s back up. What is a preposition? What is a preposition? A preposition is a word that creates a relationship…
A listener named Barbara wrote in wondering about the phrase “how come.” She wrote: The other day I was formulating a question for a Google search in my mind and started out with the phrase “How come….” I then quickly realized that I should probably use the word “Why” instead. Then I noted to myself that my natural tendency was to say “How come…” instead of “Why…” and this made me wonder how common that is. Is it a regional kind of thing, where people in certain parts of the world would tend to say one more than the other?…
THE QUICK AND DIRTY The official name is “Veterans Day,” but “Veterans’ Day” is also grammatically correct. In the United States, we’re celebrating Veterans Day next week. It’s a holiday commemorating the end of World War I in 1918, but the name of the holiday brings up a common question: Do we need an apostrophe in the word “Veterans”? The short answer is no, because the U.S. government gave the holiday its official name, and they chose to write it without the apostrophe; but today, we’ll explore why it’s grammatically correct with or without an apostrophe. 3 ways to write…
Today’s topic is “although” versus “while.” I often have to tell people that their pet peeves aren’t actually hard-and-fast grammar rules. I have to tell people that it’s OK to split infinitives, and that in some cases it’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition or use the word “between” when they’re choosing among more than two items. I know it’s upsetting to learn that your nearest and dearest beliefs are wrong, so this week, I’m going to talk about my own mistaken peeve. It bugs me no end when people use “while” to mean “although” or “whereas,” but…
“Whoa” can mean “stop,” like in this Keanu Reeves clip from “Sweet November,” or it can mean “wow,” like he often said in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” It’s supposed to be spelled W-H-O-A, but I keep seeing it spelled W-O-A-H and hearing complaints from other people who see it spelled that way. The Origin of ‘Whoa’ Here’s a way to remember the proper spelling: “Who” and “ho” are two origins that are often cited for “whoa.” For example, Dictionary.com states that “ho” came first as a Middle English command to make a horse stop and then evolved sometime around 1620 into “whoa.” To remember how to spell “whoa,” remember that…
Out of pocket meaning – is there just one? In July 2015, a listener named Barb Mindel posted a question on my Facebook page. She wrote, “I have recently heard a couple of my friends from the northeastern states use the term ‘out of pocket’ to refer to the fact that they were unavailable. What is the origin of this idiom?” I responded right away, saying that I’d put it on our list of things to cover. Well, Barb, it’s been a few years, but here, at last, is that episode on “out of pocket”! ‘Out of pocket’ is out…
The Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, just announced that Kamala Harris is his pick for vice president, and she is the first of many things. Her father immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica, and her mother immigrated from India, so she is both the first Black woman to be on a major presidential ticket and the first person of Indian descent. And here’s a piece of trivia that surprised me: According to the website FiveThiryEight, she is also the first person from west of the Rockies to ever be on the ticket for the Democratic Party—as president or vice president.…
Last week, our editor at Quick and Dirty Tips had a question about hyphens as she was working on a post about the anxiety people may feel when they re-enter society after the quarantine. She found that online dictionaries list both versions as correct—“re-enter” with a hyphen and “reenter” without a hyphen—and she wanted to know which one I prefer. Since I thought some of you might be facing the same question as you’re writing these days, I’ll share my thoughts. Even though the trend these days is to use fewer hyphens, I like the hyphenated version when you encounter…
Today, we’re going to start with rules but go heavy on history at the end because what I thought would be an easy question to answer took me down an interesting rabbit hole and finally to an interview. It all started with this voicemail message. “Hi, Grammar Girl. I actually work for the Federal Government, and I have a good enough command of writing and grammar that I am humorously referred to as the Grammar Guru. Recently we were writing a report and something came up. Some of the people on the committee thought we should capitalize ‘ZIP Code’ .…