Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Grammar
For National Grammar Day, linguist Neal Whitman takes a look at a long-standing source of contention among grammar enthusiasts: singular they. (Grammar purists, prepare yourselves for some unconventional rules!)
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During President Obama's health care summit last week, Republican House Whip Eric Cantor suffered a bit of a misspeak, saying: "We have a very difficult bridge to gap here." Whoops! It's the gap that needs bridging, of course, not vice versa.
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Erin Brenner of Right Touch Editing provides "bite-sized lessons to improve your writing" on her engaging blog The Writing Resource. Here Erin tackles the tricky distinction between compose and comprise.
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Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she takes an extended look at the troublesome issue of when to hyphenate compounds.
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Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she looks at some pitfalls in using the word proscribe.
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University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron explains how a simple grammar lesson can lead to a clash of civilizations.
Everybody knows that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. It's one of those undeniable facts of daily life, a fact we seldom question until we meet up with a case that doesn't quite fit the way we're used to viewing things. Continue reading...
Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and linguist Neal Whitman has been thinking about a question of military usage: if "50,000 troops" refers to 50,000 people, then does "one troop" refer to one person?
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