2023-01-25 17:12
A formerly useful and innocuous set of words–groom, groomed, and grooming—has become a trope used primarily to stir anxiety and dread in parents.
People who use words professio… Read More
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Daily articles on grammar, spelling, misused words, punctuation, fiction writing, freelance writing and more!
2023-01-09 05:11
I read that a political commentator, whom I will not name, asserts that five particular terms are “meaningless buzzwords.” Labeling these particular words “buzzwords&rdquo&helli…Read More
2023-01-02 05:11
A reader has asked for a post on the difference between “mustn’t have + past participle” and “couldn’t have + past participle.” He gives these examples:… Read More
2022-12-26 12:11
There’s a saying that “everyone has a book in him.” Since self-publishing has become so easy, quite a few people seem to be trying to expel it.
During the month of Novemb… Read More
2022-12-22 15:48
Artificial intelligence is increasingly present in our lives, gaining new applications every day, including in the realm of writing! Generative Pretrained Transformer 3rd Generation, or GPT… Read More
2022-12-16 13:38
Some word pairs will probably always continue to be confused. Here are five such, all of which have been mentioned on this site in the past. The examples in this post date from recent month… Read More
2022-12-13 17:10
Producing articles and other types of texts seems to be getting easier and easier with the arrival of AI writing generators.
The vast majority of AI generators and assistants use GPT-3, a s… Read More
2022-12-12 17:37
A recent request for linguistic advice ends with a plea that makes me feel like Obi Wan Kenobi:
O Maeve, … I hope you can help because the silent scream starts every time I send an… Read More
2022-11-29 14:08
This post is in response to a recent reader request:
I would be grateful if you could write about these two topics: Reported Speech and Indirect Speech.
To clarify, “Reported Speech&r&helli…Read More
2022-11-03 14:08
When I saw the following passage on the Simon Schuster site, I was plumb surprised:
When twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter’s brother joins the Army and is sent to Vietnam, Jamie is plum th… Read More
2022-10-24 10:49
A reader asks:
Can you explain clearly the difference between urgency and exigency? Thank you. Also, any thoughts on the concept or process of “moonshoot”? Heard the term when P… Read More
2022-10-17 10:49
A reader, wondering about the pronunciation of caricature, asks if I would consider including the phonetic pronunciation of words I discuss.
Many years ago, when I first began writing for D… Read More
2022-10-10 10:48
A web search for the term “crisis of truth” brings up more than a million hits.
Public figures have always lied in order to advance their careers, but in former times, they had… Read More
2022-10-03 10:48
The writer of an article in the Washington Post about the funeral arrangements for the late Queen Elizabeth II remarked that the events were “seeped in tradition.”
It may have b… Read More
2022-09-27 13:47
A reader asks about the sentence: “Vikings razed many monasteries to the ground.”
Is not “to the ground” in this statement superfluous? Where else could it be razed… Read More
2022-09-20 13:47
Lately I’ve been struck by the frequency with which I encounter the word fringe in the media.
I can recall a time when my only associations for the word were with the trim on my moth… Read More
2022-09-13 13:47
A reader asks:
Could you clarify whether a car “careens” or “careers” off the road? Are both usable?
The original meanings of the words are quite different. Career… Read More
2022-09-06 13:47
A reader requests clarification on the punctuation of appositives:
I would like to see a piece on the punctuation of appositives. Decades ago, I somehow came to believe that an appositive i… Read More
2022-09-02 15:32
I’m always glad to receive topic suggestions from readers. Sometimes I may not quite understand what is wanted, but comments can still trigger a train of thought leading to a post.
Re… Read More
2022-08-25 15:31
Another of my certainties has been shattered.
Like anyone who has tried to explain why we do not say “Jack and me went to France” or “They invited my wife and I to the par… Read More
2022-08-18 15:31
A recent post about legal terms in the news drew several interesting comments from readers, prompting this addendum.
One reader pointed out that I’d omitted the term “stare deci… Read More
2022-08-11 15:31
Including an extract from Boris Johnson’s recent resignation speech, a reader suggested that a post on the expression “them’s the breaks” might be in order.
I was a… Read More
2022-08-04 13:40
One of my favorite go-to news sources is the BBC Daily News. Reading an account of a shooting in Norway not long ago, I came to this sentence:
King Harald, Norway’s monarch, said him… Read More
2022-07-27 13:40
One day, not long ago, I read a story in the Guardian about a man who mistook an alligator for a dog. The following sentence made me grab my pen:
But the man was quickly disavowed of his be… Read More
2022-07-20 13:39
In a recent post about confusion between the words precedent and precedence, a reader commented on a similar confusion between noun-adjective distinctions like bias/biased and prejudice/pre… Read More
2022-07-13 13:39
As investigations, hearings, and trials flood the news media, a short glossary of legal terms may be useful to readers.
Anyone who has watched enough Law & Order episodes probably alre… Read More
2022-07-06 12:49
Common terms used in teaching the expletive use of it and there are “dummy it, ” “dummy there,” and “dummy subject.”
expletive: Of a word or phrase: se… Read More
2022-06-29 12:49
Esteem
An old-movie buff, I recently watched White Heat (1949) for the second time and wanted to know more about the making of it. I found an excellent review, but my inner language nerd puz… Read More
2022-06-22 12:48
Writers of children’s fiction are constantly aware of the need to write with their readers’ reading level in mind. Writers of adult fiction—perhaps not so much.
Technical… Read More
2022-06-15 12:48
Recently I read two articles back-to-back in which the phrasal verb to make up was used with two entirely different meanings. That set me thinking about phrasal verbs that have two or more… Read More
2022-06-08 20:00
A writer recently complained that Amazon had rejected her book title. She said that the title should be approved because the objectionable word in it “had a historical precedence.&rdq&helli…Read More
2022-06-01 20:00
Many of the nouns used to name body parts have corresponding verbs that describe the literal functions performed by the body part in question.
A fighter knees his opponent in the ribs.
A d… Read More
2022-05-24 20:00
In a very interesting BBC News article about ancient gardens, the writer describes an ancient relief that shows the vegetation-loving but brutal ruler Ashurbanipal and his wife reclining un… Read More
2022-05-17 20:00
A reader has asked for a discussion of the difference between the words apparently and presumably.
A meaning for presumably is easy to pin down.
The OED gives one current definition:
presu… Read More
2022-04-26 11:26
Used mostly as a noun or as an adjective, elite derives from an Old French verb meaning “to choose.” The elite are “the Chosen.”
As a noun, elite is “the pick… Read More
2022-04-19 11:26
My telephone weather app really mashes on my grammar nerve when it tells me that “rain is forecasted.”
Likewise, I find it disturbing when a state supreme court judge, ruling on… Read More
2022-04-12 11:26
In researching articles for Daily Writing Tips, I stumble upon all kinds of interesting topics and curious examples of usage.
One recent search led me to a site dedicated to clinical philos… Read More
2022-04-10 13:46
Update to “Then” or “Than” post:
Why Do People Confuse “Then” and “Than”?
Unlike some other commonly confused words, such as affect and effec… Read More
2022-04-05 11:26
Seven years ago, I wrote a post called “The Ubiquitous Butt.”
In it, I admitted my own distaste for the word, but acknowledged that butt had by then won a place in general usag… Read More
2022-03-29 17:24
The OED has nine entries for the ubiquitous word set: an acronym, two nouns, two adjectives, two verbs, an obsolete conjunction, and the combining form that appears in such words as setback… Read More
2022-03-23 17:24
The verb may is one of the oldest in English. Through the centuries, it has been used with a variety of meanings that need not trouble modern English speakers. Only two forms survive: may a… Read More
2022-03-16 13:24
Until recently, I thought everyone agreed on the meaning of mien. Dictionaries do.
Someone’s mien is their general appearance and manner, especially the expression on their face, which… Read More
2022-03-10 17:24
Bully is one of many English words that have undergone semantic degeneration or pejoration.
Beginning as a pleasant word, bully is now associated with one of the lowest forms of human beha… Read More
2022-02-24 13:38
Reader venqax poses a question about the use of the four-syllable agent noun supremacist in preference to three-syllable supremist.
On the topic of “new” words, I’m curio… Read More
2022-02-17 13:38
Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with meaning in language. Students of semantics trace the ways that words and phrases change meanings over time.
Semantic change—also… Read More
2022-02-10 13:37
A reader commenting on “TV’s War on Me and I” asks,
Is it your opinion that when a speaker refers to him/herself as “myself” (instead of “I”) that… Read More
2022-02-04 13:37
A reader poses a question about a usage that occurs in one of my posts from 2009.
Calvin Coolidge was in Vermont when President Harding died in California. Coolidge’s father, a notary… Read More
2022-01-26 14:11
A reader wonders if this sentence containing nouns in apposition has enough commas:
As a club, we must extend our thoughts and deepest sympathies to John’s wife Hazel, and his childr… Read More
2022-01-19 14:11
Words as labels
The first principal of semantics is that the word is not the thing.
Words are labels for things that exist in the physical world or in our thoughts.
The word air is not ide… Read More
2022-01-12 14:11
A reader has asked for a post on the words inception and conception, speculating, “Might they be synonymous?”
Conception comes from a Latin verb meaning, “to become pregna… Read More
2022-01-07 14:10
Since the 1990s–beginning with the American Dialect Society—various entities, including dictionaries and individual lexicographers, have announced Words of the Year in English… Read More
2021-12-22 17:17
A reader, commenting on one of my posts about the -ed past ending, suggests that turnt for turned may have a future:
Where I live, more and more I’m hearing the word “turnt&rdqu&helli…Read More
2021-12-16 17:17
In T.S. Eliot’s play, Sweeney Agonistes, Sweeney complains, “I gotta use words when I talk to you.”
Every day, I see evidence that much of modern discourse doesn’t u… Read More
2021-12-09 17:17
Some speakers continue to insist that the noun data must be used only as a plural, but the consensus is in. Although the singular of data is datum, in nonspecialized contexts, using data as… Read More
2021-12-02 17:17
A reader encountered the question of what past ending to use with the verb to highlight as in “to mark text with a highlighter” or “to cause something, such as text or an… Read More
2021-11-25 12:38
Browsing the comments attached to a previous post, I came across this lament about two changes in pronunciation that seem to be catching on with younger speakers:
I can’t keep track o… Read More
2021-11-18 12:38
A few posts ago, I wrote about the multitude of ways English provides for calling someone “stupid.” Now I’ll address some negative terms that target another human failing… Read More
2021-11-11 12:37
When I began writing about English usage, I would label sentences as “correct” and “incorrect.”
I don’t do that anymore because what is “incorrect&rdquo&helli…Read More
2021-11-04 12:37
One of my teaching dictums about parts of speech is that “a word is not a part of speech until it’s used in a sentence.” The word run, for example, depending upon context… Read More
2021-10-27 11:31
Almost right is not good enough.
I read this in the Daily Mail during hurricane season:
. . . the National Weather Service issued a slurry of alarming tweets.
Presumably, the writer meant t… Read More
2021-10-20 11:30
The term half-life existed before the term was applied to the breakdown of a radioactive substance.
One earlier meaning was “an unsatisfactory way of life.” Another was “t… Read More
2021-10-13 11:30
Advertisers pay a great deal of attention to the colors that go into their marketing materials. There’s even a branch of psychology that studies the way color can affect human behavio… Read More
2021-10-06 11:30
This recent cry of despair from a reader has not fallen on deaf ears:
You’re the only people I know to complain to, so I’m complaining again: ‘Couple’ in spoken form… Read More
2021-09-29 16:28
English has such a rich vocabulary, writers have little excuse to use a word that is almost right.
As Twain famously put it,
The difference between the almost right word and the right word… Read More
2021-09-22 16:28
An aspect of English spelling that fascinates me is the existence of what I call “fossil words”— words in which a letter is embedded like a fossil in the rock—there… Read More
2021-09-15 16:27
Perhaps, like me, you were taught in elementary school that most one-syllable adjectives, plus two-syllable adjectives that end in y, form the comparative and superlative by adding –e… Read More
2021-09-08 16:26
I did not take calculus in high school. (I barely made it through basic math.) All I know about calculus is that it is a branch of mathematics that involves a certain type of calculation th… Read More
2021-09-01 18:30
Since the media’s first faltering coverage of the coronavirus called COVID-19, the disease has not only embedded itself in the world’s population, it has also claimed a place in… Read More
2021-08-24 18:30
I’ve been bingeing on the Shetland mysteries by Ann Cleeves and have finished them all. The novels are set in the Shetland islands to the extreme north of the UK. One of the many enjo… Read More
2021-08-17 18:29
If there is any one interest and practice shared by every human being on earth, it’s talking—usually to other people, but not always.
Unsurprisingly, these 7.9 billion talkers p… Read More
2021-08-10 18:29
This post was prompted by a reader who poses the following question:
What is the preferred way to write Covid-19 in prose English?
Answer: If you write for publication, it will depend on yo… Read More
2021-08-03 17:02
An academic term receiving a lot of attention these days is Critical Race Theory.
When a previously specialized term makes its way into the general vocabulary—beg the question, moot… Read More
2021-07-29 17:38
DailyWritingTips started in 2007. Right after that we launched a free subscription to our content. Three years ago or so the free subscription was substituted by a paid, more complete subscr… Read More
2021-07-27 17:01
eponym
The person for whom something is named: chauvinism, Caesarian Section, boycott.
exonym
A name for a people used by outsiders and not by the people themselves. For example, English-sp… Read More
2021-07-20 17:01
Among the meanings of the noun effect is this:
Any of various distinct phenomena (originally in physical science, in later use also in other technical fields and in general contexts), frequ… Read More
2021-07-13 17:00
The first rule a child learns about the period (Br. “full stop”) is that it ends a sentence.
Where else is this little dot used, and when is it omitted?
Abbreviations
Abbreviat… Read More
2021-07-06 13:03
Most of us are probably familiar with these -nym words:
synonym
a word that means the same as another word: little/small
antonym
a word that means the opposite of another word: little/big
h… Read More
2021-06-29 13:03
Three rhetorical terms that describe a type of repetition are anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce.
Anaphora is the repetition of a word or sequence of words at the beginning of successive cl… Read More
2021-06-22 13:03
The origin of this expression lies in literary criticism. The term represents a contract between reader and writer.
In recent years, however, the phrase has escaped from literary criticism… Read More
2021-06-15 13:02
These three words have nothing to do with each other. They’re just interesting.
Euerergetism
The first time I encountered euerergetism may have been in an article about Boris Johnson… Read More
2021-06-02 16:18
Many of the AP Stylebook users who responded to the Grammar Day Twitter question (AP Quiz Top Two Anathemas ) complained about the usage of who and whom.
For all practical purposes, the p… Read More
2021-05-25 16:18
Traditional views about religion and sin may be in decline, but the human behavior catalogued as the Seven Deadly Sins remains very much with us. The sins and their synonyms provide writers… Read More
2021-05-18 16:17
Both these adjectives are in frequent use on the web:
awkward: about 163,000,000 hits in a Google searchuntoward: about 5,290,000.
Language, as the media illustrates daily, can be used to i… Read More
2021-05-11 16:17
Perhaps the quintessential American card game, poker gained its first popularity on the riverboats and in the saloons of the 19th century West.
Based on a European card game that involved… Read More
2021-04-29 16:11
Like the term political correctness, cancel culture has become an incantation to conjure with.
conjure: To invoke by supernatural power, to effect by magic or jugglery. From Latin conjurare… Read More
2021-04-21 16:11
Several fictional characters are so memorable that their names have been attached to physical and psychological maladies.
Some of the so-called syndromes can be found in medical sources. O… Read More
2021-04-15 16:10
On March 4 this year, National Grammar Day, the AP Stylebook editors tweeted a question for their readers:
What grammar rule do you find yourself getting wrong no matter how many times you… Read More
2021-04-09 16:10
According to T. S. Eliot, April was :the cruellest month.”
For me, April is Shakespeare’s month, a time to reread some of the plays and perhaps watch some of the film versions… Read More
2021-03-29 11:01
In English, the digraph ae functions chiefly as a suffix to denote the plural of Latin borrowings that retain a hint of their original “Latin-ness,” chiefly in the realm of scie… Read More
2021-03-22 11:00
This post was prompted by a headline in the Washington Post:
US deports former Nazi guard whose wartime role was noted on card found amid sunken ship
The phrase “amid sunken ship&rdqu&helli…Read More
2021-03-15 10:59
Rhetoric is one of those academic words that has migrated into the popular vocabulary and is frequently used as if it can be defined as “empty words.”
For example, in the afterm… Read More
2021-03-08 10:59
Not since I read Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy have I accumulated so many words in my reading that are new to me.
These words are not coming from antique works of fiction. They p… Read More
2021-02-26 14:50
Penpointing for pinpointing
In my part of the world, many speakers have a hard time hearing the difference between the vowel sounds in pen (rhymes with Ben) and pin (rhymes with sin). The… Read More
2021-02-19 14:50
Every writer has had the experience of submitting a piece of writing in the certainty that it is free of error, only to find at least one embarrassing typo or other fault in it as soon as i… Read More
2021-02-12 14:49
English vocabulary includes thousands of words that originated in languages other than Old English.
Some of these linguistic immigrants never quite acculturate. They continue to sound fore… Read More
2021-02-05 14:49
Reader ApK has asked for a discussion of the words sarcastic, sardonic, and facetious—
all examples of verbal irony.
verbal irony: the expression of one’s meaning by using lang… Read More
2021-01-19 16:07
Once upon a time, I encountered the word epistemology and its forms only in academic writing. Lately, I’ve been seeing it all over the place, often unaccompanied by any definition.
E… Read More
2021-01-12 16:05
A sentence in a biographical piece in the Washington Post about the gifted librettist Randy Rainbow got me thinking about syntax and linking verbs:
His closest friend became his caustically… Read More
2021-01-05 16:07
Until recently, I thought that most English teachers shared my view that mastering a standard form of English is the acquisition of a desirable skill that is as much a basic of a general ed… Read More
2021-01-05 16:05
During the recent unsettled times, I have come across a new word (new to me) to describe an extralegal maneuver to seize power in a country that has an established government: autogolpe.
a… Read More
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