For those who boldly violate the Prime Directive by trying to enrich the general public’s understanding of English grammar and thus change the planetary culture, each tiny triumph is something to ...

You’ve probably heard the old story about the pedant who dared to tinker with Winston Churchill’s writing because the great man had ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s scribbled response: ...

Reader Don in Los Angeles County wrote recently with a question about a well-known grammar issue called a “split infinitive.” “I learned about them 50 years ago and I am somewhat sensitive about them ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Leave it to a scientist to finally explain how to kill off bad writing. In his new ...

My friend Oliver Kamm and I have fallen out. He has a new book out in February called Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage. The blurb says that “to deliberately split an ...

Gerunds are the -ing form of a verb, and infinitives are the to + base form. These words can be confusing; they combine the meaning of a verb with the grammar of a noun. My father asked me to phone ...

My day was as empty as a human resources manager’s imagination, so I was heading for a pint or two of Smithwick’s with my barfly associates, the Afternoon Travelers, when an anomaly loomed on the ...

We can all probably recite at least part of Star Trek's iconic mission statement, as dictated by William Shatner in the series' opening credits. Every week, fans were told that the Enterprise's ...