Stack up with?
Stack up with, or against?
Understated or overstated
It cannot be overstated that “it cannot be understated” will most likely be understood as infelicitous phrasing.
Positive anymore on the screen
“Well, anymore you’re always busy.”
Efforting, or effort as a verb
How to make it clear that someone is trying hard or that someone is trying too hard? By avoiding the use of effort as a verb. I hereby pronounce the verb effort a skunked term.
Five-and-ten, five-and-dime
Usage.
Pleaded or pled?
Joyce Vance thinks, wrongly, that “pleaded” is wrong.
MSNBC, sheesh
Chris Jansing, earlier this afternoon: “The Washington Post reports that Jack Smith is honing in on Trump’s post-election fundraising,” &c.
Garner on Black and white
Bryan Garner explains why it makes sense to capitalize Black but not white.
From the television
“The official start of summer.”
Play, do
What verb goes with a crossword?
“Valedictory”
I think they mean “victory.”
On a helical staircase
I like this passage on purism in language use, from Follett’s Modern American Usage (1966).
Anne Fadiman on singular they
“For more than six decades, I’ve accepted without thinking that when we say that someone went to the store, we don’t have to specify whether that someone was old or young, rich or poor, fat or thin, tall or short, but we do have to specify whether the someone was a ‘he’ or a ‘she.’ Now I’m starting to think that’s a little weird.”
“An important Rubicon”
A Rubicon is by definition important. Ask Julius Caesar. Or Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.
Not prolific
The word’s associations with new life and creativity make it a particularly grotesque choice for characterizing a killer.
“Hi” vs. “hello”
From Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
Word of the day: involve
I began to wonder what’s wrong with “involve” and whether a recommendation to avoid it could be found elsewhere.
MSNBC, sheesh
“To tell everything that he knows fulsomely and honestly.”
Orient and orientate
Choosing “orientate” on either side of the Atlantic might mark a speaker or writer as something of an outlier.
Review: Word by Word
Kory Stamper’s Word by Word does for lexicography what Mary Norris’s Between You & Me does for copyediting: it makes visible the work, the worker, and the workplace.
“Alternate” and “alternative” “facts”
Mary Norris on “alternate” and “alternative.”
Usage tip of the day
On “owning it.”
Usage tip of the day
From Leddy’s Imaginary Dictionary of Usage (2016).
Usage tip of the day
The entry for “nice”: from Leddy’s Imaginary Dictionary of Usage (2016).
Dr. Watson’s prose, however
The stuffiness of “however” suits him.
If and whether
From Sir Ernest Gowers.
The New Yorker that and which
Mary Norris’s explanation of The New Yorker approach to that and which is likely, I think, to leave many viewers confused.
More thusly
Is it really a word to avoid?
Thusly
A word to avoid?
Words, phrases, etymological cages
Sir Ernest Gowers, or a second- or third-generation reviser, writing about what has come to be called the etymological fallacy, the mistaken idea that a word’s present meaning must be related to that word’s etymology.