Language experts agree that no single English language rule exists for terms like "farmers market," "couple's retreat" or ...

The lexicographer Kory Stamper’s new book, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, is an eloquent defense of a “live and let live” approach to English. Well, you know what they say about ...

Ellen Jovin is not the grammar police. She's more like a grammar guru, a gentle, nonjudgmental guide who knows English isn't etched into a linguistic stone, rigid and unchangeable. Instead, she knows ...

If you’ve ever used Microsoft Word, chances are you’ve seen that jagged green line appear beneath something you’ve written -- scolding you for drafting a fragmented sentence, maybe, or for slipping ...

Know someone who is heading back to school this fall? Here are some grammar tips I compiled for you, my dear (not-school-aged) reader, to pass along to that special student in your life. Don’t write ...

All learners of English encounter problem points on their journey towards mastering the language. A number of readers have sent in queries about English grammar, words and phrases, idioms, style. Here ...

Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook. Ghost words are the invisible words lurking in the shadows of our dictionaries, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting writers and speakers. They are the ...

“Imagine what our neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.” — Mister Rogers Well, folks, this is it. Today marks my final Grammar ...

The Anglo Saxons didn’t say ‘the’, they said ‘sê’ – as in pass me ‘sê’ bread. Nowhere in Old English grammar is there actually a precise ancestor for ‘the’. But some time over the 1100s it entered our ...