What's a Participle? Before we talk about what it means to dangle a participle, we have to answer the question What is a participle? A participle is a verb that acts like an adjective. The present participle form of a verb usually ends with ing. For...
Grammar Girl here. Todays topic is the complex-compound sentence. Guest writer Sal Glynn writes: Most writers worth their fingertip calluses begin as avid readers. We read books, magazines, and websites indiscriminately until we start to notice the w...
Grammar Girl here. Todays topic is collective nouns, nouns that describe a group, such as family, orchestra, and board. Guest-writer Bonnie Trenga writes, There are around 200 collective nouns in the English language (1). Sometimes they take a singul...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is capitalizing tricky nouns like Ground Zero, Internet, and Earth. Quite a few people have asked me whether they should capitalize the words Internet, Web, and website, including Chris from Olney, Maryland; Matt from...
Grammar Girl here. Just between you and me, today I'm going to talk about the pronouns I and me. I've been meaning to talk about the phrase between you and I for a while, but when I heard that Hillary Clinton had chosen the song You and I by Celine D...
Grammar Girl here. Today guest-writer Bonnie Trenga is going to help us talk about me and I and how to order them in a sentence if you're using other pronouns or nouns to make a compound object or subject. It all started with a call from a listener w...
Grammar Girl here. Todays topic is appositives. Guest-writer Bonnie Trenga writes, Today we have to decide if information is essential or extra, because if its extra well need some extra commas. The concept Im referring to is called an appositive. A...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is apostrophes. A couple of weeks ago Legal Lad did a show about homeowners associations. What you didn't hear was that behind the scenes, Steve, one of our copy editors, debated whether to put an apostrophe in the wo...
Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it? Ted Striker: Surely you can't be serious. Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley. That exchange from the movie Airplane! is presentedgratuitousLYto spotlight adverbs ending in ly, our topic for...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is one versus you. Guest-writer Bonnie Trenga is going to help us determine the best way to talk in general terms about the average person. Bonnie says, If you want to talk about people in general, should you say, It...
Grammar Girl here, or actually for this episode I should say, 'Tis I, Grammar Girl, here to help you understand when to use the words I and me.. So this week, Jodie wanted to know which is correct: It is I or It is me. She says that when she answers...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is which pronoun to use after the word than, as in Nobody is more excited about the Grammar Girl book than I!Or is it than me? Listen up because guest-writer Charles Carson is going to explain. A few years ago around...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is Yoda's grammar. Yes, Yoda from Star Wars. But first I have to apologize for a mispronunciation last week. The name of the author I was talking about is pronounced Proost, not Prowst. It's Marcel Proost. I'm sorry t...
Yo! Grammar Girl here. I have grammar news about the word yo this week. Listen through to the end because YOU may be able to help a language researcher. The grammar news is that Dr. Elaine Stotko, from the School of Education at Johns Hopkins Univers...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is words that sound funny. Funny ha ha, not funny weird. And now, on to funny words. Guest writer Kevin Cummings, of the Shortcomings Audio podcast, writes, I had my first comedy hit with the phrase itty-bitty kidneys...
