This is commonly misused and a serious personal pet peeve of mine. The origin of the word decimate is, unsurprisingly, from the Latin decimatus, past ….
Category: Writing Tip
The adjective decent means sufficient or acceptable. The local diner you like to frequent may not serve a four-star breakfast, but it probably has decent ….
Dear Weeping Editor, I am one of those writers that… makes you cry sometimes. Lately I’ve struggled with ellipsis… or ellipses… however it’s spelled. I ….
In this idiom, the appropriate definition of curb is an edging (as of concrete) built along a street to form part of a gutter. The ….
Cue typically refers to a signal that encourages someone to take an action, while queue indicates an ordered line or file. Both cue and queue ….
In somewhat common and very incorrect use these days are phrases like “the criteria is”. This is grammatically incorrect because the word “criteria” is a ….
BLUF: (Bottom Line Up Front) The plural of crisis is crises. crisis: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive ….
Creek and creak are homophones. They are two different words that are pronounced in the same way though spelled differently and having different meanings. Creek ….
A council is meeting for discussion or advice. To counsel is a verb meaning to give advice. Before the 16th century, council and counsel were ….
The words continual and continuous both come from the word continue, but continual means start and stop, while continuous means never-ending. Continual is chronic, like ….