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Grammar, etymology, linguistics, usage, and more from the bestselling language writers Patricia T. O\'Conner and Stewart Kellerman.
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How 'works' works
Q: The word "works" (meaning "factory") is a hard nut to crack. It looks plural but acts singular. Can it be used to speak about two factories? And how did it come to mean a factory in the first place? A: The noun "work" has been used in both singular and
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The iffiness of the subjunctive
Q: I have noticed the absence of the subjunctive in lines from recent shows and movies. Have you? A: The English subjunctive has been gradually disappearing since Anglo-Saxon days, with ups and downs along the way, but it hasn't disappeared yet. In fact,
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The acronym, initially speaking
Q: It seems as if journalists are now calling the initials of every organization an acronym. But I always understood it to be an acronym only when the initials can be pronounced as a word. A: It's not just journalists. Many English speakers use the term "
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Performative gratitude
Q: I would love to see a story on "performative gratitude," a term for expressing gratefulness when you don't really mean it. The usage seems to be flooding society. A: As far as we can tell, "performative gratitude" first appeared about a dozen years ago
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On 'seeing' and 'hearing'
Q: Why is the present tense, not the past, used in this sentence: "I hear you're leaving the country"? And why are "see" and "hear" now dynamic, not stative, on TV news? Grammar books say you can't use progressive tenses with stative verbs, but I often he
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