July 24, 2023

Passive Voice

Just because a sentence lacks action doesn't mean it's in the passive voice. Here's how to avoid passive construction and why sometimes it's fine.

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July 17, 2023

Verbs: Mood, Modality, Tense, Aspect, Number, Person and Voice

Have you ever heard someone say that a verb was in the past tense? How about that it’s in the first person? Or maybe that something is in the passive voice? Or perhaps that a verb should agree in number with its subject. It seems there’s no limit to the number of categories we can apply to verbs. But in fact, you can narrow them down to these seven.

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July 10, 2023

To get plural possessives right, take it step by step

When I saw “men’s’ clothing” with two apostrophes, I figured it must be a typo. I was editing a professional writer who’s been on the job for years, and I know from experience that writers make typos, but none — none of them — think that two apostrophes go in “men’s’ clothing.”

But then I saw “women’s’ clothing,” with two apostrophes. Then “children’s’ clothing.”

That’s when I knew that what I was witnessing was not a single accidental strike of an apostrophe key. Instead, it was the weirdest take on plural possessives I’ve ever seen.

Most writers, in my experience, stumble on plural possessives — even writers who have no problem with singular possessives or plurals that aren’t possessive.

They understand that the tail of a dog is the dog’s tail, singular possessive. And they understand that when one dog joins another dog, you have two dogs, plural, not possessive. But when they have to apply both those rules to the same word, they start to lose their grasp on them.

For regular nouns like “dog,” making the plural possessive isn’t tough. Many get it right: “the dogs’ tails,” with the plural S followed by the possessive apostrophe. But nouns with irregular plurals, like “man,” “woman” and “child” trip them up. Throw in some confusing expressions like “each other,” and almost everyone loses their grasp on how to use apostrophes: childrens’? childrens? childs’? They’re not sure.

So what’s the trick to writing plural possessives correctly? Just remember these basic rules and don’t get frazzled. To make a plural noun that ends in S possessive, add an apostrophe: kids’ clothes. If you want to make possessive a plural irregular noun that does not end in S, like children, add both an apostrophe and also an S: children’s clothes. Here's the full story in my recent column.

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July 10, 2023

Synonyms, Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs, Antonyms

We all know what synonyms are. But the terms homonym, homophone, homograph and antonym are also useful.

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July 3, 2023

Wrong and Wrongly

"You're doing it wrong" is better than "You're doing it wrongly" because "wrong" and "wrongly" don't follow the standard form in which the adverb necessarily ends in -ly.

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June 26, 2023

'My Husband and I's First Trip'?

Not sure whether to say "my husband's and my first trip"? "My husband and my first trip"? Style guides are unclear whether to make the first noun possessive when the second person is also the speaker. Just don't do what this English teacher did when she say "my husband and I's first trip."

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June 19, 2023

'All Intents and Purposes,' 'Spit and Image' and Two More Figures of Speech People Mess Up

It's not "all intensive purposes" and you probably don't want to use "spitting image," either.

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June 12, 2023

Irregardless

The word everyone loves to hate, "irregardless," is in poor taste. But it's not wrong.

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June 5, 2023

Some Things You Don't Need to Capitalize

Just because a restaurant was the first to put scrambled eggs in taco shells, it doesn't mean you capitalize "scrambled egg tacos." And just because someone is chair of the Fine Arts Department doesn't mean you need capitals in "She teaches fine arts." When in doubt, when the term could be a proper name or generic, opt for the generic interpretation and lowercase it.

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May 29, 2023

Evacuate

Do you evacuate a building? Or are the people in it evacuated? Both are fine because "evacuate" is both a transitive and an intransitive verb.

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