A word I didn’t remember seeing before in print shows up in today’s story about the opening of school Public… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Usage
Changing usage
A colleague asked me this week about changing usage. I was leading a training session on grammar and usage and… Read more »
Don’t gift us
A reader asked about using “gift” as a verb “as in a fast food restaurant that encourages me to ‘gift’… Read more »
Get your ice-cold cliches right here
Over on the WakePol blog, N&O staff writer Ryan Teague Beckwith has a few words to say about the tired… Read more »
One in three knows what to do
A discussion among copy editors turned to a construction that writers use to make percentages easier to understand, “one in… Read more »
Modify what you mean to modify
Writers sometimes let their modifiers dangle because they’ve put them in the wrong place. I have wanted for some time… Read more »
The word formerly known as …
I haven’t seen this mistake lately: Tres Chicas features Caitlin Cary formally of Whiskeytown. It’s from the new Web site… Read more »
Being couth
The word choice in this lead from Sunday’s paper drew a call from one reader to our public editor: The… Read more »
Creating new words
“Mutancy” shows up in Craig D. Lindsey’s review today of “X-Men: The Last Stand.” A colleague wondered if we should… Read more »