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🎁 A seasonal mistake
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'Tis the season for confusion about apostrophes. You've probably already seen it: a holiday card from "the Smith's" or "the Lee's," instead of the properly unpunctuated "Smiths" or "Lees." In the spirit of this common seasonal mistake, we're reviewing apostrophe use today. And we have another holiday-themed reminder. The apostrophe serves a few purposes in the English language. It's used for possessives: "Jane’s favorite punctuation." It's also used for omissions: "I've been using apostrophes well since '04." You also might add an apostrophe to limit confusion, such as in the phrase do's and don'ts. And you want to dot all your i's, not your is. That one showcases two apostrophe rules at once: You should use them to limit confusion and for the plurals of single letters: "He was conscious of the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle." However, do not use them to make decades or acronyms (or your last name) plural: "The students in their 30s have the highest GPAs." So should your holiday card be free of apostrophes? Not if you're writing season's greetings. Before we sign off for the rest of 2024 (we'll be back in your inbox on January 3), we're excited to share that we're working on new features that we plan to unveil next year. If you're interested in getting a preview — and giving us feedback that will help these features meet your needs — please let us know below ⬇️
Happy holidays! ❤ Team Stylebot
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Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.
If you picked "whomever" in last week's quiz, why did you do that? "Well," you might have said to yourself, "whomever is for objects." That's true. But consider this sentence: The boss said she'll recommend whoever/whomever performs best. Would you make the same choice? We can get two lessons out of last week's quiz. There's subjects and objects: Subjects carry out the verb of a sentence, while objects receive the action of the verb. In the sentence, "She will recommend him," "she" is the...
Last week's quiz question might have seemed confusing because of the lesson that preceded it about subject-verb agreement, but most of you got it right. "Neither" usually takes singular verbs, and even though "of the options" is right next to the verb, it doesn't affect the verb since it's a prepositional phrase. What writing challenges trip you up? Remember that we're happy to tackle them in this newsletter. Submit your questions here. In the meantime, here's this week's quiz: The boss said...
Most of the time, subject-verb agreement comes naturally. We don't second-guess the verbs we use in a sentence such as, "I am going to the park, and she is going to meet me there." But every now and then, as with our "couple" example from a few weeks ago, it gets tricky. You showed in last week's quiz that you're clear on the rule that you need to use "either" with "or" and "neither" with "nor." (Neither "either...nor" nor "neither...or" is correct.) But the subject-verb agreement tripped you...