Grammar

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We’re giving you permission to disobey your stodgy old high school English teacher.

Learn what the idiom means, where it started, when to use it, and how to tell if your ducks are in a row.

From the NASA mistake that made an interplanetary rocket explode to the bible with a very naughty misprint, these typos are an ode to proofreaders.

Not even the strictest sticklers seem to care about how we use words like ‘abhorrent’ and ‘sodden’ anymore.

These mistakes show that little kids know a lot more about the rules than we think.

We’re taking Strunk and White and grammarians everywhere to task in the latest episode of The List Show.

The prefix ‘pre-’ often seems redundant—but it’s actually working hard to serve its purpose.

Plus, a simple trick that will help you identify most true cases of the passive voice. (Hint: It involves zombies.)

From phrasal verbs to loanwords, here's how English speakers repeat themselves without realizing it.

From polite offers to emphatic exclamations, English speakers have cleverly twisted negative expressions to mean something rather different.

If you want to raise your crossword game to the next level, grab a pencil (not a pen!) and follow these tips for success.

Because sometimes, periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses won't do.

It’s complicated—and there are more questions than answers.

This list of linguistics terms will teach you how to tell your spoonerisms from your mondegreens.

From “Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder” to “Indian Ocean Talks,” these funny news headlines will make you say, “Wait, what?”

The apostrophe in Presidents Day—or President's Day or Presidents's Day—is all over the place ... or nowhere to be found at all.

Exolangs are constructed languages that imagine how the languages of extraterrestrial beings might look and sound—and linguists have come up with some pretty mind-bending options.

We often use ‘eldest’ and ‘oldest’ interchangeably, but the words shouldn’t be swapped out so easily. Here's how to use each.

The literal meaning of ‘sic’ is ‘so’ or ‘thus.’ But the way writers use it is a little more nuanced.

English, the language of Shakespeare and the internet, is often touted for its flexibility and adaptability. But with great flexibility comes great inconsistenc