I fielded a question recently about “minding your p’s and q’s.” I had used that expression in a column a few weeks ago, and it prompted an email from a reader named Christine who was curious about ...

I fielded a question recently about “minding your p’s and q’s.” I had used that expression in a column a few weeks ago, and it prompted an email from a reader named Christine who was curious about the ...

Grammar: it's everywhere. And, as soon as someone identifies himself as an expert, you can almost always safely assume he's going to judge you anytime you end a sentence with a preposition. I'm no ...

Mark Twain’s encounter with a particular foreign tongue inspired an essay called “The Awful German Language.” Welcome to a new feature of this column. We won’t call it “The Awful English Language.” ...

Apostrophes are the curly floating commas in sentences that usually indicate possession or a contraction. There are a few set phrases and holidays, however, that also use apostrophes. In fact, ...

Apostrophes are flooding the market – and mostly in all the wrong places. Old time teachers of English grammar must be turning over in their graves. Even some writers and editors seem unaware of the ...

Some years ago I was talking with a high school administrator when he asked me if I could do him a favor. Citing it as one of his pet peeves, he asked if the Daily Journal could stop putting ...

Can you spot the grammatical error here? We’ve all committed this common punctuation mistake when making last names plural—and it’s even easier to make now in ...