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Do you or don't you?
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To write the phrase do's and don'ts, you need to create your own list of do's and don'ts. Do you, for example, stay consistent on apostrophe use, or do you instead insert an extra apostrophe for clarity? You can see that we opt for the latter, but that's not what you prefer. The vast majority of you who took last week's quiz like "dos and don'ts." We can relate. As longtime newsletter readers know, one of our pet peeves is when people unnecessarily add an apostrophe along with the "s" to make a word (or name) plural. In the case of "do's and don'ts," though, we're OK with adding the apostrophe for clarity. "An editor’s best friend": We told you last week that USC Annenberg students are already loving Stylebot's new Google Docs extension so much that we want to help other educators get it in place for fall. That's why we're offering three months free for educators who sign up by June 30. We'll even Zoom into your class in the fall for onboarding and a quick copy editing lesson. Sign up on our website and use code SUMMER2025 at checkout to claim this offer. All right, now onto this week's quiz: ❤ 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...