Search results for “Ho”

On Nov. 15, a high-level government official caused quite a stir when he disparaged “white suburban moms” for resisting efforts to elevate teaching and learning in U.S. schools. “All of a sudden,” he said, “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they …

Last week we discussed Americans’ odd fondness for whom. It’s a word that few really understand, but it just sounds so darned cosmopolitan. If we’re infatuated with whom, we’re over the moon about whomever. You hear it everywhere. People love saying it—right or wrong. Just recently, a major American newspaper ran a headline that said …

Consider the humble pronoun. It seems that fewer and fewer Americans know when to say “she” or “he” or “me” instead of “her,” “him,” or “I.” It used to be that little Gloria would run home and tell her mother, “Me ’n’ Annie saw a walrus!” Whereupon her mom would say, “ ‘Annie and I,’ dear.” …

Writers today have problems keeping their sentences internally consistent. This is especially true of print journalists. Because of staff cutbacks at financially challenged newspapers, many articles are proofread hastily, if at all. Combine that with the shocking decline in Americans’ English language skills over the last fifty years or so and you get sentences unworthy …

I received an e-mail from a fellow fussbudget deploring basically. He considers it meaningless and useless, and if you think about it, he has a point. Say any sentence with it and without it, and basically there’s no change in meaning (see?). Perhaps the most basic use of basically is as a promise to cut …

That’s right, I admit it. I’m a word nerd. I pick, pick, pick at the way you express yourself. Despite protests of apathy, people of all ages care about how well they express themselves. Deep down, everyone likes to be right about language, and you can even hear little kids teasing each other about talking …

In a recent newsletter, I corrected myself after some readers wrote in saying the word that should have been who in the sentence "There's not one mother I know that would allow her child to cross that street alone." However, it got me thinking more about this topic, so I dug a little deeper into …

The demonstrative adjectives this/that/these/those, which may also be pronouns, tell us where an object is located and how many objects there are. This and that are used to point to one object. This points to something nearby, while that points to something "over there." Examples: This dog is mine. This is mine. That dog is …

Whether to use the preposition into or the phrase in to can be a source of confusion. We'll take a closer look at both to help clarify which is correct in its context. Into Into Meaning: to the inside of Usage Example: The children jumped into the lake for a swim. Into Meaning: toward or in the …

Before computers, we used typewriters to underline book titles, and we placed quotation marks around article titles. However, many current style manuals recommend italicizing book titles and magazine names (impossible to do on a typewriter) and using quotation marks around articles. Example: I read Lord of the Flies in high school. Example: I enjoyed reading …