National Grammar Day, celebrated every year on March 4th, is just around the corner. This year, the American Copy Editors Society is sponsoring a Tweeted Haiku Contest. Just tweet your grammar-related haiku using the #GrammarDay hashtag and you'll be entered in the competition! The deadline is noon EST, Monday, March 3rd. You can read more details here, and check out last year's winners here.

Online dating sites love to use Valentine's Day as an opportunity to talk about how people size up their potential romantic interests. And it turns out that an attention to grammar, particularly usage of the word "whom," just might help out men who would like to attract members of the opposite sex.  Continue reading...

Language writer Jen Doll takes on the phenomenon of linguistic "peeving" for the Atlantic and collects a list of "classics." See any you recognize?  Continue reading...

Recently Lynne Truss, professional pedant, declared in her Telegraph column that English is "doomed."

Her proof? Someone wrote "It maybe time to act on this" in an email to her.  Continue reading...

For 24 years, the American Dialect Society has chosen a Word of the Year at its annual meeting in January. Typically, the word has been a noun or verb that has risen to prominence during the previous year. But this year, strong candidates such as selfie and twerk ultimately lost to a word that isn't a noun, verb, or adjective; doesn't describe some cultural phenomenon; and has been in continuous use in English for more than 700 years: because. How did that happen?  Continue reading...

English language users have long struggled with lie, meaning "to recline," and lay, meaning "to put down." Many of the traditional English Christmas carols we hear at this time of year were written or translated during the 19th century and use lie and lay distinctly.  Continue reading...