If you aren’t interested in something–say, science fiction movies…. Are you disinterested in science fiction movies or uninterested in science fiction movies? If you aren’t interested in science fiction movies, you are uninterested in them. If you are disinterested, this means that you are neutral on a particular...
Here is a clear guide to the writing of titles. When are italics used, and when are quotation marks used? http://homeworktips.about.com/od/mlastyle/a/titles.htm ...
A clever New Yorker cartoon (May 28, 2012) shows a man tapping on his keyboard with his computer screen in front of him, and behind him a woman looking over his shoulder at the screen. She says, "It's 'She's driving me crazy and I'm not...
A writer in a Globe and Mail writes about a camping experience: "So it was with great excitement that I signed up my boyfriend and I for a night of succah camping in the Negev." That should read "I signed up my boyfriend and me...
A link to a Globe and Mail piece by Warren Clements on the current sliding-away of conjunctions: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/conjunctions-get-no-respect/article4485729/ ...
A CBC report yesterday referred to "a couple and its dogs". In the context, it was clear that "couple" referred to two people, but the pronoun "its" made them sound inanimate, or at least non-human. "Couple", being a collective noun, can be either singular or plural,...
When writing information that includes males and females, the acceptable "he or she", "him or her" can become tedious if the reference is repeated several times. To avoid that kind of tedium, try a couple of options: 1. try putting the whole thing in the plural--rather than "the student...
His action lead to obvious consequences. The above sentence is incorrect. If it is taking place in the present, lead should be leads. If (which is more likely) it is taking place in the past, lead should be led. The confusion here comes from the fact that...
A recent news article on a murder trial said that if it hadn't had been for a discovery fluke, the murderer "may have gotten away with it." This implies that the murderer did get away with it, but the context of the sentence implies that he...
An apostrophe in the middle of a word means that one or more letters have been left out, and so the apostrophe can be regarded as taking the place of the left-out letters. So it is with "you're", which is a short form of "you are",...