Usage Thursday: Top Nine Misused Words

One of my oldest, dearest friends uses the word irregardless. She is smart and highly educated, yet insists on using this non-word. Should I correct her? Cracked.com says yes and lists eight other words that don’t mean what we think they do with advice on whether it’s worth insisting people use them the right way. [...]

Usage Thursday: E.G. and I.E.

The abbreviated Latin terms e.g. and i.e. are often confused and used incorrectly. E.g. stands for exempli gratia, which means “for example.” I.e. stands for id est, which means “that is” or, put another way, “in other words.” The two abbreviations have distinct meanings and should not be used interchangeably:
Jeff and I are traveling to [...]

Usage Thursday: Complement Vs. Compliment

Always on the hunt for new opportunities, I had a job interview yesterday that included a pretty rigorous, three-part editing test. The first part was timed: I had thirty minutes to rewrite thirteen sentences that had been rejected from real marketing materials. The second part was two pages of copyediting questions ranging from choosing the [...]

Usage Thursday: Loose Vs. Lose

I see loose confused with lose all the time, although more often in student papers and working drafts than in published material. It’s worth discussing here, as often when the mistake is corrected, the writer doesn’t understand what error he or she has made. Confusion arises because lose has an oo sound but not the [...]

Usage Thursday: Lightening Vs. Lightning

I saw this common usage error again just the other day in a published book. Often, writers will use the word “lightening” when they really mean “lightning.”
The word “lightening,” pronounced with three syllables, is the present participle form of “to lighten,” which means to make something lighter, such as light, color, or a burden:
The sky [...]

Book Review: Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Launched two years ago in the summer of 2006, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing currently ranks thirty-second among iTunes’ top podcasts. Capitalizing on this success, creator Mignon Fogarty has authored a book that explains grammar, punctuation, and usage to the language layperson with gentle humor and accessibility.
The subject-verb agreement error on [...]

Usage Thursday: Nauseated Vs. Nauseous

I’m not going to commit any of us to a standing appointment to discuss language usage on Thursdays, particularly with Monday and Tuesday already dedicated to the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation, but if such a question does come up—and please, do raise your questions—the answer will, at least for now, be revealed [...]