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A wrap on rack
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The end of the year is approaching, which means it's wrap season. Gift wrapping, sure, but also the time of year when we get wrap-ups of our habits and behaviors. If you answered our quiz questions this year, you can pat yourself on the back: There were only a few questions that a majority of quiz respondents got wrong. Great work 👏 We're wrapping up our quiz series with a look back at those trickier questions and reviewing the lessons, starting with the one that tripped up the most people: nerve-racking, not "nerve-wracking." Here are the results of that quiz: Here's how we broke it down when we first covered this phrase more than two years ago: Rack is a word with many definitions. By lexicographer Bryan A. Garner's count, it has nine meanings as a noun and seven as a verb. And while a rack might end up everywhere from your closet to your dinner plate, it is also an instrument of torture 😬 Thus, as a verb, "rack" can mean to torture or stretch, which leads us to two common phrases and another noun and verb with overlapping meanings: wrack. The phrases nerve-racking and rack your brain are often written as "nerve-wracking" and "wrack your brain." The confusion is understandable, given that "rack" and "wrack" are sometimes used interchangeably. But usage manuals are pretty united on the phrases "nerve-racking" and "rack your brain": Don't use the "w." You'll find more varied advice on how to use "wrack" on its own. Like "rack," it has quite a few meanings, including both "destruction" and "seaweed." And fun fact: Those definitions aren't as far apart as they might seem, as "wrack" evolved from a word meaning "shipwreck." Are you racking your brain to figure out which quiz question we'll review next week? If you have a guess, hit reply and let us know. ❤ 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.
We're back after the Thanksgiving break to revisit one of our first holiday-themed newsletters from 2022. Hope your holiday season is off to a good start! Now that we got our “Yule” pun out of the way in the subject line, here’s where we let you know that even though you’ll see both “Yule” and “yule” this holiday season, we recommend capitalizing it both on its own and in “Yuletide.” (And if you see it all the time and wonder what it really means, it’s basically a synonym for “Christmas.”) No...
Every one of our newsletters is designed to give you a writing tip you can use in your everyday life. See what we did there? If you remember last week's quiz, you might already know whether or not you got the right answer. If you need a refresher, we quizzed you on the use of "every one/everyone" and "every day/everyday." And most of you got it right! You needed the two-word versions of each term to correctly complete the sentence: "Every one of them noticed the mural as they walked past it...
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,...