Search results for “as”

When talking about something that didn't happen in the past, many English speakers use the conditional perfect (if I would have done) when they should be using the past perfect (if I had done). For example, you find out that your brother saw a movie yesterday. You would have liked to see it too, but …

E-Newsletter reader Clifford A. recently wrote: My wife says she texted our daughter. I say, I sent her a text message. Is texted an accepted usage? English allows many nouns to become verbs. We can table a motion, salt our food, and water our plants. Particularly in the realm of developing technology, new usages are …

The Chicago Manual of Style lists the following holidays as singular possessives: Mother's Day, Father's Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. Plural possessive is used for Presidents' Day. Your guess is as good as anyone's about Secretary's vs. Secretaries' vs. Secretaries Day and Boss's vs. Bosses' vs. Bosses Day. What would you do if …

Please note: This original post has been updated and replaced by a new version of Writing Dates and Times. Rule: The following examples apply when using dates: The meeting is scheduled for June 30. The meeting is scheduled for the 30th of June. We have had tricks played on us on April 1. The 1st …

Rule: Always spell out simple fractions and use hyphens with them. Example: One-half of the pies have been eaten. Rule: A mixed fraction can be expressed in figures unless it is the first word of a sentence. Example: We expect a 5 1/2 percent wage increase. Example: Five and one-half percent was the maximum allowable …

If you question the necessity of punctuation, here is a story that should illustrate its power. A professor wrote on the chalkboard: A woman without her man is nothing. He asked students to correct any punctuation errors. While most of the male students saw nothing wrong with the sentence, most of the females rewrote the …

Can you guess which word I see misspelled most often? Did you guess misspelled? You’re getting warm. Actually, it’s grammar. From my experience, I think it’s safe to estimate that 20 percent of the English-speaking world spells it with an -er ending. Before anyone points an accusing finger at anyone else, we might want to …

Using bi or semi in front of time periods can create tremendous confusion these days as definitions and style guidance continue to soften and blur. To illustrate this, we located the following definitions of words with the bi or semi prefix after researching both style books and dictionaries. Biweekly: once every two weeks or twice a …

Prepositions are certain words that go directly before nouns. They often show direction; for example, below, above, over, under, around, through, in, out, between, among, to, toward(s), etc. Other common prepositions include of, for, from, with, like. Rule: You shouldn’t use or end a sentence with an unnecessary preposition, i.e., when the meaning is clear …

A verb is called a regular verb if its past tense and past participle are formed by adding -ed (waited, insisted) or sometimes just -d (breathed, replaced). Verbs in English are irregular if they don't have a conventional -ed ending in the past tense. Example: Go (present tense), went (past tense), gone (past participle) Note: …