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...
8 days 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...
15 days 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...
22 days 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...
29 days 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"...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
We don't have a handy "principal is your pal"-style trick this week to help you remember the difference between the homophones tenant and tenet, but it looks like most of you don't need the help. Nearly 80% of last week's quiz participants got it right. It's a fun little parallel that both "principle" and "tenet" mean "belief," while their homophones can both refer to people. ("Tenant," of course, is an occupant or dweller.) While "tenant" and "tenet" have different meanings now, each word's...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Maybe it's all the back-to-school activity, or maybe you learned the "principal is your pal" trick back in elementary school, but either way, you didn't seem to need much help with last week's quiz. The vast majority of you knew that the principal would announce a new cellphone policy on the first day of school: Would it have been as easy to fill in this blank, though? Their _____ concern is getting all the children there safely. While principle is only a noun, principal is a noun and an...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Most of you didn't fall for it in last week's quiz, but you might say "infamous" is infamous for being misused. Or it might just be famous. Either way, we were impressed with last week's quiz results, with more than 63% of you answering correctly: So if the words famous and infamous aren't interchangeable, what's the difference? "Famous" simply means widely known, while "infamous" means being known for something bad (aka, famous with a bad rap). However, a lot of people seem to use "infamous"...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Happy Friday! Our writing quiz is back from summer break this week. And we don't know if we would go so far as to describe it as famous (😜), but would you call it infamous? You almost certainly know what "famous" means. But can you pinpoint "infamous"? Here's your shot: She became __________ after becoming the youngest person to win three Olympic gold medals. famous infamous Either option is fine Oh, and we heard from some of you after last week's newsletter with more examples of...
2 months ago • 1 min read