Category: Definitions

The conditional tense—also sometimes referred to as the conditional mood—communicates what happens, will happen, might have happened, or would have happened if we do, will do, or did do something. The situation described can be real or imaginary; in either case, an action relies on something else (a condition). For that reason, most English sentences …

A GrammarBook.com reader recently wrote to us with a question about the use of morphemes in American English. We thought this was a good opportunity to review the subject in further understanding the structure and parts of our language. Language, like matter, can be broken down from its largest to its smallest components. The five …

A big drawback to a column like this is being perceived as having insufferable attitude: “So, Mr. Expert, I guess you think you’re so superior.” It’s not like that. Word nerds do custodial work. A lot of brilliant people can’t write. Ernest Hemingway was a terrible speller. Word nerds don’t think they’re “better”—do janitors think …

In this week’s newsletter we’ll review two classic topics that continually draw comments from our readers. In and of Itself To many people, the phrase in and of itself sounds clunky and old-fashioned. However, when used sparingly—and correctly—it serves a purpose. Example: The weather was not, in and of itself, the cause of the traffic …

It's enough to drive even the most exacting writers, proofers, and editors a little batty sometimes: More than one descriptive word precedes a noun, forming what we call a compound modifier. Do we need to hyphenate the words, or are they well enough left alone? What if we have two words modifying another word and all three …

This column is mostly concerned about the written word, but even so, pronunciation will inevitably enter the picture from time to time. The expressions chomping at the bit and stomping ground are both corruptions of the original champing and stamping. People find this incredible. But, for instance, consult the 1961 cult-favorite western film One-Eyed Jacks, …

We're all aware of how vital marked and measured time is to guiding and structuring our days. How then do we treat it in precise and careful writing? We offered some guidelines in our updated April 2017 article Writing Dates and Times. We'll expand on those here by delving deeper into the most recent editions of …

We've written a newsletter article about it (Problems with Prepositions), and in Rule 1 of Prepositions we state, "One of the undying myths of English grammar is that you may not end a sentence with a preposition." Yet, we still receive admonitions from well-meaning readers who think we've made an error when ending a sentence with a …

So: It's among the shortest words in English, and use of it abounds. So, when are we going to meet up? That movie was so good. I so much want to be there. He's not feeling well, so he probably won't go to the meeting. The word has become a versatile agent for our language …

Did something like this happen to you back in grade school? Some little miscreant is reprimanded by the teacher, whereupon the kid protests: "I didn't do nothin'!" And faster than you can say "teachable moment," the teacher says, "Now, Billy, you mean you didn't do anything. When you say you didn't do nothing, that means …