Titles can be confusing—either due to length (we’re looking at you, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet), punctuation (Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood), or content (sigh, 2002’s Mr. Mom). But, titles can also stump readers and writers across the board due to title case—conventions of which words in a sentence start with capital letters. Have no fear: we’ll walk you through the steps, one …
Adverbs are incredibly common in English. You probably use hundreds of them every day, even if you’re not quite sure what an adverb is. An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, other adverbs, or adverbial phrases. There are different kinds of adverbs, which you can learn more about in our article Six Types Of Adverbs Used In The English Language. In this …
Winter is a busy season for people who follow the Christian faith. The longest observed of the many religious dates that dot the winter calendar is Lent. To clarify for those who aren’t religious, Lent is not a time when people talk about things they’ve lent. The words Lent (with a capital) and lent (always lowercase except at the start of a sentence) are homonyms, …
Have and has are different forms of the verb to have. Even though they come from the same word, there are slight differences in the way they’re used. While the verb to have has many different meanings, its primary meaning is “to possess, own, hold for use, or contain.” Have and has indicate possession in the present tense (describing events that are currently happening). Have is used …
If you want to talk about the future, you’ll typically need to use the words will and shall. But which one should you use? Are they interchangeable or do they mean different things? In this article, we explore the meanings of will and shall, explain how and when they are typically used, and provide examples that show how will and shall are typically used in …
The man ate an extravagant meal at a fancy restaurant. Ritzy! This classy sentence uses three of some of the most commonly used words: the, a, and an. However, there is more to these words than simply the number of times that we use them. These three words belong to a class of words known as articles. If you want to become a grammar master, …
Have you ever had influenza? Do you like to spread gossip? Did you have a nice childhood? Are these questions causing you confusion? Don’t worry, you aren’t being graded right now. We just wanted to ask some questions that use nouns, words that we use to refer to people, places, things, or ideas. We use many different types of nouns in our speech and writing, …
A noun is a word that refers to a person, place, thing, or idea. We use nouns to refer to general things like friends or pizza and specific things like Leonardo Da Vinci or Canada. We use a lot of different nouns like these to describe everything around us, but all of the nouns we use can be separated into just two different types: common …
Titles are capitalized as a way of giving a person respect—which, let’s be honest, also opens the door to rampant capitalization when just about everyone wants a capitalized title. (Digital Overlord, we’re looking at you.) One person who doesn’t have to worry about gratuitous capitalization is the president. The word president, when it refers to the president of the United States should be capitalized. But did …
What’s an interrupter? Interrupters—like this little guy right here—are squeezing into more and more contemporary writing. They’re often the goofy/sarcastic “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” asides writers play with in nonacademic writing and online content. Also called insertions, interrupting phrases, or parenthetical expressions, interrupters are words, phrases, or clauses that break the flow of writing—because if the author feels like it, why not?—to offer additional, can’t-be-held-back, or spur-of-the-moment thoughts …
Let me tell you about the exciting day I had yesterday. At 8 in the morning, I was eating breakfast with rock stars. For the rest of the day, we were performing music and meeting with fans until the sun set. Sounds like fun, right? The two sentences I used to tell my little story also both showcase a fun way to use verbs in …
If you take a walk around town, you’ll see many different things. You might see some ducks. You might go to the beach. You might stop and talk to your friend Patrick. You might even feel pain if you trip and scrape your knee. There is one thing that ducks, beaches, pain, and Patrick have in common: they are all nouns. Lots of the words …