6 Forgotten “Rules” of English Grammar

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 …

Eggcorns: A Funny Way Words and Phrases Can Change

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 …

Words That Are Easy to Mix Up

Words’ meanings shift over time. This doesn’t happen because a high priest of English decide that it’s time for a change. It happens because the way people use words is always evolving. Once enough people have begun using a word to mean a certain thing, the word, by definition, means …

When to Use the Passive Voice

Wait – sometimes you’re supposed to use the passive voice?? But didn’t you hear from a style guide or SAT prep book or self-appointed authority on language that the passive voice is bad? It’s true that many people have objected to the use of the passive voice – but in …

The Origins of Garden Path Sentences

Read that title again. It is a complete, grammatically-correct English sentence. Do you understand it? How about these (all, like the title sentence, originally found here or here? • The prime number few. • The florist sent the flowers was pleased. • Fat people eat accumulates. • When Fred eats …

Don’t Panic about Parallelism

Parallelism may sound fancy, but on a basic level, it’s just the use of grammatically similar constructions for all items in a series. Sentences that follow the rules of parallelism are typically considered more logical and easier to read. Here is a sentence that lacks parallelism: Emus like eating bugs, …

Homophones 101

If your knot concentrating, a common affect is that its to easy too right a sentence like this won. Read that sentence out loud. It sounds perfectly fine. But on the page, it’s pretty messed up. (Did you catch all the errors? There are eight.) This is because it’s full …

5 Techniques for Revision

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” – Raymond Chandler While this quotation is perhaps a bit graphic, it captures a truth about the writing process. Writing – the process of drafting – involves the production of the verbal version of vomit: a large amount of …