It's hard to miss a mural that spans an entire block. It's much easier to overlook missing commas. One word would have changed the answer to last week's quiz, which most of you got right: Here's the correct sentence: "The mural, which spans the entire block, is being restored." However, if you change "which" to "that," the correct answer is none. Why? Which introduces nonessential clauses — that is, clauses that don't change the main point of the sentence. That introduces essential clauses,...
10 days ago • 1 min read
There wasn't a full moon on Halloween, but you might have glimpsed one earlier this week. Either way, you don't capitalize "moon," or "sun," for that matter. That was the first of the errors in last week's quiz. Here's the sentence again: "The full Moon was the perfect compliment to their night of trick or treating." So how many did you spot? For most of you, it was three, the same number we counted. The other two were "compliment," which should be complement, and "trick or treating," which...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Happy Halloween! We definitely didn't scare you off with last week's quiz. In fact, more of you answered than usual, and more than half of you got it right: Here's how we would write the sentence: In this day and age, it's hard to tell whose data is secure. So we count three total errors that we put into two buckets: Contractions and possessive pronouns: Possessive pronouns can be tricky because we're so used to using apostrophes for possessives. But possessive pronouns (its, hers, theirs,...
24 days ago • 1 min read
Well, we failed to wreak havoc with last week's quiz 🙃 Despite the fact that the phrase is sometimes written as "wreck havoc," 80% of you got the right answer. "Wreck havoc" is an understandable mistake, because both "wreck" and "havoc" mean "destruction." But, using that logic with the verb "wreck," which means "to damage," "wreck havoc" means to damage destruction. "Wreak," meanwhile, means "to bring about," hence "wreak havoc." You didn't need the bonus points, but some of you replied to...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
We don't often think of chairs as being deep. But roots? Absolutely. And therein lies the confusion between "deep-seated" and "deep-seeded." But most of you weren't fooled by last week's quiz — almost 60% of you knew the phrase is "deep-seated." So how did "deep-seeded" get planted (😉) in our minds? Well, for starters, the two phrases sound alike. Plus, "seeded" makes sense in this context. It's a classic eggcorn, a misheard phrase that sometimes makes logical sense. Some other eggcorn...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
We had a tie in last week's quiz about how to punctuate the term commonly used for carved pumpkins, with 35% of you choosing "jack o'lanterns" and another 35% choosing "jack-o'-lanterns." So who's right? Let's ask Stylebot 😉 It's tedious, but we put the hyphens and an apostrophe in jack-o'-lantern. Another common format is "jack-o-lantern." "Jack o'lantern" is much less common. So who is Jack? And what's he doing with a lantern? Here's where we tell you what carved pumpkins and marsh gas have...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
If you chose "pouring over" in last week's quiz, did you associate the act of studying intently with poor posture? Perhaps pore and pour's fellow homophone can help you remember the correct phrase. Almost everyone who took last week's quiz correctly identified "pour" as the verb to use for serving drinks. But nearly a third of you chose "pouring over" for the act of studying the audit logs, when the correct phrase is poring over. When you hear the phrase "poring over," you might picture...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
It's officially falltime, and yes, you read that right. The answer to last week's quiz ("Which of these is NOT a word?") was autumntime. But most of you <ahem> fell for "falltime," which gets a listing in Merriam-Webster (our default dictionary), while "autumntime" does not. Neither "falltime" nor "autumntime" is in wide use compared to the other seasonal terms. Why? It might have to do with the age of the words "fall" and "autumn." English speakers started describing seasons at their...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
If it's been, um, a while since you've reviewed the rules for a while and awhile, it's easy to get confused about when to include a space and when not to. "Awhile" is an adverb, while "a while" is a noun phrase. So in last week's quiz, the correct answer was "awhile," but most of you chose "a while": If the sentence had been, "Once they arrived, they made it clear they planned to stay for _______," then the answer would have been "a while." And that's the tip in our style guide: Use "a while"...
2 months ago • 1 min read