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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.
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,...
There wasn't a full moon on Halloween, but you might have glimpsed one earlier this week. Either way, you don't capitalize "moon," or "sun," for that matter. That was the first of the errors in last week's quiz. Here's the sentence again: "The full Moon was the perfect compliment to their night of trick or treating." So how many did you spot? For most of you, it was three, the same number we counted. The other two were "compliment," which should be complement, and "trick or treating," which...