For those who boldly violate the Prime Directive by trying to enrich the general public’s understanding of English grammar and thus change the planetary culture, each tiny triumph is something to ...

Gerunds are the -ing form of a verb, and infinitives are the to + base form. These words can be confusing; they combine the meaning of a verb with the grammar of a noun. My father asked me to phone ...

If you want to help another person — say, your employee — with his writing, there are several approaches you could take. You might look at the big picture: How well are the ideas organized and ...

My day was as empty as a human resources manager’s imagination, so I was heading for a pint or two of Smithwick’s with my barfly associates, the Afternoon Travelers, when an anomaly loomed on the ...

My friend Oliver Kamm and I have fallen out. He has a new book out in February called Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage. The blurb says that “to deliberately split an ...

When I started working at a new company, I was disappointed to learn that an “enterprise” account had absolutely nothing to do with spaceships. Instead, enterprise accounts are the big fish your team ...

You’ve probably heard the old story about the pedant who dared to tinker with Winston Churchill’s writing because the great man had ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s scribbled response: ...

Skip downward to go straight to the dirty tips and tricks. Have you ever had a preening pedant correct you when you split an infinitive? Has a self-righteous scold kindly let you know that one thing ...

Lexicon Valley has moved! Find new episodes here. Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 56: And Infinitum: Subscribe in iTunes ∙ ...