Two words that sometimes get confused are “disparate” and “desperate”. They have quite different meanings, but they can sound very similar in some accents, and if you’re using autocorrect, you …

May 6, 2013 · Which symbol should be used with numbers: a hyphen (-), or an en dash (–)? The question may seem trivial -- a dash is a dash, right? -- but using the correct

May 19, 2009 · The Washington State University language site says: These two spellings [cannot/can not] are largely interchangeable, but by far the most common is “cannot” and you should probably …

Aug 3, 2007 · The rule of putting a period at the end of every thought would be simpler, except that in English, we’re allowed to include more than one thought in the same sentence. These thoughts are …

Sep 14, 2011 · The English language includes an interesting category of words and phrases called contronyms (also spelled contranyms, or referred to as autoantonyms) --

Is “math” or “maths” the correct word to use as the shortened or colloquial form of the word mathematics? The answer is that it depends on where you are.

Jul 3, 2007 · In the post Show, Don’t Tell, I mentioned dialogue as one of the ways you can “show” your reader what’s happening in a scene. Effective dialogue is an essential part of both fiction and …

Sep 9, 2011 · When the first line of each paragraph in the running text is indented, block quotations of a single paragraph, and the first of multiple paragraphs, are not indented, but subsequent ones should …

Jun 9, 2008 · If you work in an office, you probably write emails every day – to colleagues, to your boss, to clients. Even if you’re still at college, you’ll need to email

Jun 7, 2014 · A reader who works with legal transcription has the following question: There seems to be a trend towards having the prefixes and suffixes separate from the modified noun instead of being …