Search results for “ag”

The following are less-than-exemplary snippets from recent newspapers and magazines … • “The suspect was linked to at least nine different bank robberies.” Why not just “nine bank robberies”? It would be interesting to know what compelled the writer to add “different.” However, this sentence is not a total loss; it could be shown to …

Because English is so unpredictable, it’s often impossible to infer a word’s pronunciation from its spelling. Dictionaries help, to a point. But dictionaries often seem all too willing to penalize time-honored pronunciations after a word gets mispronounced by a sufficient number of people. So here is another in our series of pronunciation columns. The words …

It has been a while since our last pronunciation column, so here’s another group of familiar words whose traditional pronunciations may surprise you. (Note: capital letters denote a stressed syllable.) Antarctica  Like the elusive first r in February, the first c in this word is often carelessly dropped: it’s ant-ARC-tica, not ant-AR-tica. Err  Since to …

Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words by best-selling writer-editor Bill Bryson offers serious scholarship with a smooth, light touch. It’s a hard book to stop reading once you’ve opened it. We have a lot of other reference books in our offices, but the most recent of those came out in 1983. That was way back in …

This column is mostly concerned about the written word, but even so, pronunciation will inevitably enter the picture from time to time. The expressions chomping at the bit and stomping ground are both corruptions of the original champing and stamping. People find this incredible. But, for instance, consult the 1961 cult-favorite western film One-Eyed Jacks, …

Do you use a singular or plural verb to match a collective noun such as team or staff? The answer is, It depends. If these nouns are acting as a unit, use a singular verb. Example: The team is heading for practice this afternoon. If the sentence indicates more individuality, use a plural verb. Example: …

Today's social media began taking shape in the early 2000s with platforms such as MySpace and LinkedIn. It has since expanded into influential applications such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat. Text messaging likewise gained popularity in the early 2000s and peaked in usage between 2006 and 2010. It then broadened …

We recently discussed how nouns can be made into verbs, a practice referred to as verbing: e.g., Why don't you friend me on Facebook? Within its dynamic fluidity, English also often uses verbs as nouns or turns verbs into them, a process known as nominalization. Examples Let's go for a walk. What an epic fail. …

A fixed grammar lets us communicate with a clear, ordered structure we can all understand. Functioning as a GPS for directing our thoughts and ideas, it provides accurate markers and routes for moving our mind's content into intelligible expressions. While language is organized to unify understanding, it also can bend and flex to expand intentions …

The English we speak in the U.S. today represents centuries of influence, change, and inheritance. We can see this, for example, in how American English has been used in the 2020s as compared with during the 1820s. We can also readily recognize differentiating factors such as how our word choices differ from those in other …