Search results for “whereas”

If you leave something in the oven for too long, it's probably going to burn. That's frustrating, but even worse is having to make a note about it later. Was your food burned, or was it burnt? What's the distinction between the words? In this quick post, we'll discuss the differences between burned and burnt …

Should you write setup or set up? Which one is correct? We will look at the difference between the expressions so that you will be set up for success with them in your writing. The Difference Between Setup and Set Up Setup and set up are obviously alike, and both can be correct in certain …

What do you call someone who has just entered their first year of high school or college? It's easy to confuse the words freshman and freshmen. They are spelled almost identically, and it's easy to miss the difference sometimes when we hear them spoken aloud. So how can we tell freshman and freshmen apart? Let's …

Many movies feature a hero who comes to the rescue or otherwise saves the day. But what happens when more than one hero arrives to protect humanity from an intergalactic league of hostile aliens? What would be the correct spelling for the word meaning more than one hero? If you've ever wondered about the spelling …

Along the way we've enjoyed exploring some of the colorful qualities of American English and its immediate relatives in the U.K. and Commonwealth countries, such as in our discussions of spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation. In this review, we'll consider some different ways American and British English use verbs. American vs. British English Verbs: Spelling …

Few sets of words stump speakers and writers of American English as much as farther and further do. In this post we'll examine the correct uses for each word. One reason farther and further are difficult to distinguish is that both mean something close to "beyond." However, there is a big difference. Farther generally refers …

A GrammarBook.com reader recently wrote to us with a question about the use of morphemes in American English. We thought this was a good opportunity to review the subject in further understanding the structure and parts of our language. Language, like matter, can be broken down from its largest to its smallest components. The five …

A few years ago, there was an ad campaign for an ice cream bar that was now supposedly better than ever because of its “25 percent thicker chocolatey shell.” Note the misdirection, worthy of a master magician: a thicker shell, yes! We all love chocolate, and now we’re going to get more of it—except, hey, …

Some would say that the 2012 election year’s political dialogue divided the country into the obscenely ultra-rich one percent and the ninety-nine percent who comprise the poor, the shrinking middle class and the, I guess you could say, tastefully affluent. Compare that with the literary one-percenters, a mulish minority of nitpickers who believe “proper” speaking and …

Words that start with the letter h don’t always act like it. Consider “herb,” when it means “an aromatic plant used for seasoning in cooking.” Americans dump the h, whereas many Brits pronounce it. So we say “an ’erb,” but an Englishman says “a herb.” A different sort of h-confusion happens when self-important speakers and …