Writer G.D. Gearino employed a little-used word in his Sunday Journal story about three guys who go water-skiing every month,… Read more »
Posts By: Pam Nelson
The great verb shift
We Americans are fond of creating verbs from nouns. We speak of how the war “impacts” the president’s popularity, how… Read more »
Brio!
At least one reader asked a colleague about the word brio in this headline Coble brings brio to county. The… Read more »
Concrete thinking
One of our Home & Garden columnists reminded me recently of the difference between concrete and cement. Cement is the… Read more »
Wailin’ and whalin’
Words labeled as “informal” or “colloquial” in the dictionary show up in print in our conversational age. Yesterday, I ran… Read more »
Today’s tip: The sound of history
A colleague and her friend asked about whether we should use “a” or “an” with “history” and its derivatives “historic”… Read more »
Watch the modifiers
A phrase at the beginning of a sentence often modifies the subject of the sentence. Sometimes writers confuse us by… Read more »
Hold the reins
A story I was copy-editing a few days ago had a homonym problem. Near the top of the story was… Read more »
Where “frag” comes from
This headline on newsobserver.com this morning sent me to my dictionary: Defense in ‘fragging’ case asks for expert help Fragging… Read more »
Questions – direct and indirect
A reader asked about these two sentences: * Analyze three situations to determine what the unacceptable behavior is and what… Read more »