Search results for “APP”

Words that start with the letter h don’t always act like it. Consider “herb,” when it means “an aromatic plant used for seasoning in cooking.” Americans dump the h, whereas many Brits pronounce it. So we say “an ’erb,” but an Englishman says “a herb.” A different sort of h-confusion happens when self-important speakers and …

How valid can a rule be if nobody knows or cares about it anymore? That all depends on what the definition of “nobody” is. A lot of people I’ve been around seem to feel “nobody” applies to just about everybody 15-plus years younger or older than they are. Generational outcasts—the nerds, wonks, and misfits—also get …

Oh, the things we see in print these days … From Time magazine: “General David Petraeus asked a famous question: ‘Tell me how this ends?’ ” Did you catch it? Here’s a clue: tell me how that’s a question. If Petraeus had asked a question, it would have been something like, “Tell me, how does this …

During a recent gubernatorial campaign, a reporter asked a local to comment on one of the candidates. The reply: “I can’t say too much good about him.” Someone reading that might conclude the statement was negative, but anyone listening knew it was just the opposite. From the way he said it, the man clearly meant, …

Many of you sent in comments on last week’s Year-End Quiz. The question receiving the most comments was: 7. James is trying to decide between three college majors; accounting, finance, or economics. Our point with this question was to demonstrate that the semicolon should instead be a colon. We didn’t anticipate the many comments exemplified …

As we enter the holiday season, we thought you'd enjoy one of Tom Stern's classic reviews of his Christmas catalogs. Have you noticed that Christmas is in the air? I started noticing in October, when I received my first Christmas catalog eleven days before the start of the World Series. New ones have been arriving …

Our Virginia: Past and Present is a fourth-grade history textbook that was in wide use in Virginia’s schools until a few years ago. Then it was found to be rife with misspellings and blatant falsehoods, such as: The Confederacy consisted of twelve states (actually eleven). The United States entered World War I in 1916 (it …

Euphemisms put a happy face on the world’s brutishness. When a player is laid out by a ferocious hit in a football game, announcers downplay it with a cheerful “He really got his bell rung.” We had a Department of War from the eighteenth century until the late 1940s. Then it was renamed the Department …

Whether to use an additional s with singular possession can still be a source of heated debate. This review will help to resolve some of the questions surrounding that subject. Rule 1: Many common nouns end in the letter s (lens, cactus, bus, etc.). So do a lot of proper nouns (Mr. Jones, Texas, Christmas). …

I am deeply saddened to inform you that Tom Stern died last week. He had recently been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Our loyal readers will recognize Mr. Stern as the author of our weekly e-newsletter articles and as a co-author of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. He began writing monthly articles for us in …