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PSLtime
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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 extremes: the warmest and the coldest. That means "summer" and "winter" were around before "spring" and "fall." And "spring" fell into place while we were still using both "fall" and "autumn." Both have stuck around, in part thanks to American colonists. Whatever you call this time of year, we hope you've been able to indulge in your seasonal flavor of choice. And speaking of...
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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 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"...
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...
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...