Category Archives: grammar
Words Worthy of Being Trashed
While I may have written a book on the topic (Literally, the Best Language Book Ever), it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who thinks that some words, phrases, and expressions deserve to be tossed into the … Continue reading
Trite Trophy Winner 2010: At The End of The Day
Gene Collier, a sports columnist for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, has awarded the “Trite Trophy” to a deserving sports cliche for the past 27 years. In the column, he mocks commonly used sports phrases and mixed cliches in what has … Continue reading
Talk About a Holiday Special: Everything Is Free at Target!
By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever I know that retailers always try to top each other during the Christmas shopping season, but Target has seemingly gotten carried away: Everything in the store is free, at … Continue reading
Tone Check
By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever Did you run a grammar check, spell check, and tone check before sending that important e-mail to your boss? If you were like me (until fairly recently), I didn’t … Continue reading
Come On, Dictionary
By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever When you heard that refudiate, Sarah Palin’s mistaken combination of refute and repudiate, was made one of the New Oxford American Dictionary’s words of the year, I’m sure that … Continue reading
Language And Grammar Resources (and More)
In case you hadn’t noticed, we changed the look of the blog recently. The most recent template didn’t highlight the pages on the site as well as this one does, so let me introduce (or re-introduce) some of the pages … Continue reading
National Unfriend Day
By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever According to Jimmy Kimmel, Facebook is cheapening the definition of the word friend and is, therefore, proposing a National Unfriend Day for November 17. This idea fits in with … Continue reading
I Wish I Was Wrong, But I’m Not: More on Subjunctive
By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever Sherry previous wrote about the subjunctive mood (Subjunctive Uses Were Not Was) a while ago, but I recently wrote about it on my writing tips for my job at … Continue reading
If/Then Construction
When I put my meteorology hat aside and focus on editing, one of the most persistent errors I see is with the if/then construction when using a conditional sentence. When one clause of sentence is only true if a condition … Continue reading
The Point is Mute
By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever This is another example of what I like to call “Close but no cigarette.” I don’t remember where I heard it, as a good blogger should, but I recently … Continue reading


