Extinct forms of life are documented in the fossil record. Obsolete forms of language are documented in what are known as linguistic fossils. Some of these fossils can be found in everday English. Linguistic fossils are not preserved texts or audio recordings – they are features that were once common …
You probably know that thinking you’re bad at something can lead you to fail at it. But did you know that thinking you’re good at something can lead you to fail at it, too? This is an important paradigm shift. Whether you think you’re bad at a given task or …
Are you a member of the grammar police? Some people act like their job is to pounce if someone makes a mistake in writing or speaking. Others people think spelling and grammar matter so little that they don’t even care about the errors in their own work. However, the most …
Last time, we went over some common sets of homophones. Often, when people get those mixed up, they actually know which one is which – it just takes a little effort to keep them straight. The sets in this list may be a bit more confusing. How many do you …
Many Western intellectuals of the eighteenth century highly valued Latin and logic. Attempts to codify a prescribed English grammar often attempted to use the rules of Latin and of mathematical logic. Here are a few examples of prescriptivist grammar rules and where they came from: Don’t use a double negative. …
Unlike spelling, grammar (however you define it) has few rules that apply to one hundred percent of situations. However, formal situations often require that you conform to certain stylistic and grammatical guidelines. Often, these guidelines are in place to make writing clearer or less clunky. This post and the two …
Are you a grammar whiz who always nails the use of their/they’re/there? Do you scoff at people who confuse the apostrophe in it’s versus its? Some grammar mistakes are so common that people know to look for them immediately, but others are more sneaky and might slip by unnoticed. Below …
English grammar rules are weird. Many things that would have been considered “ungrammatical” in the past are now perfectly acceptable – to the point where you may never have thought twice about using them. Here are six former English grammar rules. At a certain point, people broke these rules so …
If you’re a hare’s breath away from meeting the goal, then for all intensive purposes we’ll say you’ve met it. Some people would just be overjoyed to hear their bosses make this comment. Others might have to contain their amusement (or annoyance) at the eggcorns. What are eggcorns? Well, in …
English grammar can be tricky. If you grew up in an English-speaking country, you may remember diagramming sentences in school, agonizing over past participles and adverbial clauses. However, chances are that your grammar classes only went over a teeny tiny proportion of the rules that govern English. Does that scare …
