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Words & Grammar?

Affect, effect, and the arguments your group chat keeps having. 23 questions and counting.

Affect vs. effect: which one do I want?Affect is almost always the verb, effect almost always the noun: the rain affected the game; the rain had an effect on t…
Who vs. whom: does anyone still care?The test: answer the question with he or him. He gets who; him gets whom. In speech, whom is dying and nobody will arres…
Is irregardless a word?Yes, it is in the dictionary, and has been for decades, labeled nonstandard. Dictionaries record usage rather than issue…
Does literally now mean figuratively?The intensifier use of literally is centuries old; Twain, Joyce, and Dickens all did it, and dictionaries record it. Eng…
Is i before e except after c actually true?The short rule fails constantly: weird, science, seize, their. The full old version, restricted to the ee sound, works b…
Further vs. farther: is there a difference?Farther for physical distance, further for everything figurative: he ran farther, we discussed it further. The distincti…
Your or you're: what is the actual rule?You're is a contraction of you are; your shows possession. Expand the contraction to test it: if you are fits the senten…
What is the Oxford comma, and do you need it?The comma before the final and in a list: red, white, and blue. It is optional, but use it, because leaving it out occas…
Fewer or less: which is correct?Fewer for things you can count, less for amounts you cannot: fewer bottles, less water. The famous exception is time, mo…
Why is it a pair of pants when it is one garment?Because early leg coverings genuinely were two separate pieces, tied on individually at the waist. The phrasing outlived…
What is the longest word in English?It depends what counts. The longest in major dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis at 45 letters…
Where does the word woke come from?It began in African American English as stay woke, meaning stay alert to racial injustice, documented back to at least t…
Why is English spelling so inconsistent?Because the spelling froze while the pronunciation kept moving. The printing press standardized spellings just as Englis…
When does its take an apostrophe?Only when it means it is or it has. The possessive its takes no apostrophe, which breaks the usual rule and is exactly w…
How does a word get into the dictionary?Editors track real usage across many sources over time and add a word once it shows sustained, widespread use with a sta…
Why do British and American English spell things differently?Largely one man. Noah Webster deliberately simplified spellings in his American dictionaries in the early 1800s, droppin…
Are double negatives actually wrong?Wrong in standard written English, but grammatically systematic in many dialects and in most world languages. I don't kn…
Why do we say bless you when someone sneezes?Nobody knows for certain, but the most cited story credits Pope Gregory I during a plague outbreak around 590 AD. The co…
What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?A simile compares using like or as; a metaphor states the comparison directly. He fought like a lion is a simile. He was…
What is the difference between e.g. and i.e.?E.g. means for example and introduces a partial list. I.e. means that is and restates or clarifies precisely. Memory tri…
Why is I capitalized in English?Because a lone lowercase i was too small and got lost or misread in medieval manuscripts. Scribes enlarged it for legibi…
How do people's names become regular words?They are called eponyms, and English is full of them. Sandwich, boycott, silhouette, saxophone, and nicotine all come fr…
Can you end a sentence with a preposition?Yes. The prohibition was invented in the 1600s by writers trying to make English behave like Latin, and no major style g…