The Grammarphobia Blog: Imperatively speaking
Q: A sign in the bathroom of the ladies’ locker room says, “It is imperative that nothing but TP is ...
The Grammarphobia Blog: The pilgrimage of ‘progress’
Q: In looking up “progress,” I stumbled across this note: “The verb became obsolete in British English use at the ...
The Grammarphobia Blog: Blowing Their Cover
[Pat’s review of a book about how publishers tout their books, reprinted from the September 2022 issue of the Literary Review, ...
Reporting Verbs in English: 27 Words for “Say”
We use reporting verbs to report what somebody said — to tell someone what another person said.Let’s look at an ...
Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free: Negative adverbials in English
OK. We’re going to talk about negative adverbials in English.But first, let’s start with Madonna and a line from her ...
Job vs Work: What’s the Difference?
You know what’s quite surprising? The fact that a lot of English learners, even high-level English learners, still get confused ...
Ways of Looking in English: Ogle, Gaze, Gawk and 12 Others
Quick! Answer the question!What can you do with your eyes?Most people would probably answer that question by saying, “Duh. You ...
Furniture Vocabulary: 63 Must-Know Furniture Words in English
There’s a lot of furniture vocabulary in English. I mean, furniture is a big part of our everyday lives, right?So ...
Describing Trends in English: Everything You Need to Know (Almost)
Before COVID, I never thought I’d spend so much of my week looking at graphs.But now, we’re all obsessed with ...
Advanced English Articles: 3 New Ways to Think about “A” and “The”
Today, you have a choice:Do you want a quick overview of how to use articles (a, an, the) in English? ...
Placeholder Names: Whatshername, Thingamajig, So-and-So and Other Words for When You Don’t Know a Word
Do these sentences sound weird to you?“We did a lot of activities last weekend.”“I saw so many amazing artefacts at ...
75 Body Idioms in English
OK. Look at yourself!I guess you can probably name most of the parts of your body that you can see ...
