The following is the second part of Erin Brenner's response to the recent piece by Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner, "'Whose' an Animate Object?" In the first part, Erin considered the use of that to refer to people, and here she examines whether whose should be used for inanimate objects.  Continue reading...

In a recent article on the Visual Thesaurus, Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner state that when referring to a person, the writer should always use who and never that. Often I agree with what Glickman and Rubiner say, but not this time.  Continue reading...

New York, New York. It's my favorite city in the world, and I recently returned from a visit there accompanied by my husband and son, both first time visitors to the Big Apple. We had a blast.

We saw three Broadway shows, toured the UN, the Guggenheim, the Met and the MOMA (yes, my son is long-suffering) and walked the magnificent High Line in Chelsea.  Continue reading...

Last fall, Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer wrote here and in his New York Times column about writers who use a we voice when truly they are I's writing personal opinions. In a few cases, Zimmer wrote, he'd accept using the plural pronoun for the singular, officially called nosism, from nos, we in Latin, but in general he deplored the practice. Using we for I opens writers up to "charges of gutlessness and self-importance," Zimmer wrote; "the we disease...continues to infect many written genres."  Continue reading...

Participle.

It's one of those words your English teacher used once or twice but that didn't really stick with you. Yet improper use of a participle can cause your sentence to blur before your readers' eyes. In this Grammar Bite, we'll define participles and look at how things can go awry with them. Conquer the dangling participle, and your writing will smarten up right away.  Continue reading...

This is a strange expression, often heard in the form: “You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face [when X happens].” But what does it mean and where does it come from?  Continue reading...

Is the bloom off your New Year's resolution rose? If so, you’re in good company. Four out of five people who make New Year's resolutions eventually break them. And 33 percent don’t even last till the end of January!  Continue reading...