Keep Your Mitts Off My …
Mettle…Metal…Meddle…Medal? This is where poor pronunciation gets us … pure confusion. These four words are so often mispronounced (well, okay, pronounced sloppily) that their misuse in writing is almost as certain as death and taxes. So here’s the easy way to remember how to use them: Metal (/meh-tuhl /) is a noun meaning a substance […]
Serial Killers Don’t Murder Cereals
A cereal killer would be someone who takes the life out of your bowl of porridge. A serial killer, on the other hand, is someone who makes a habit of taking the lives of others according to a pattern. Cereal, you see, is a noun meaning a type of grain product. In Europe, it can […]
When You Need Advice, Ask Someone to Advise You!
The Grammar Guru has been asked to explain the difference between advise and advice, two frequently misused words that should be easy to tell apart. Advise is a verb, meaning “to tell someone what they ought to do.” It is pronounced /ad-VIZE/. Someone advised him not to invest in widgets. Advice is a noun, meaning […]
Don’t Flaunt Your Tendency to Flout the Rules….
… it might make you look silly. Here are a couple of words that are oh-so-frequently interchanged — incorrectly. Flaunt (pronounced “flawnt”) means to ostentatiously display your behaviour, to show off. The little girl who has just gotten a new dress will show off, strutting about and making it obvious to everyone that she knows […]
Y’all Are Making the Grammar Guru Crazy
Okay, look, it’s simple. Hear means to use your ears or your hearing aid to listen to something that is being said. If you agree with someone’s statement emphatically, you say, “Hear, hear!” Here means in this exact place. So you can say, “I can’t hear you because there is a crazed iguana screeching in […]
Clearing up Confusion
Who is the man with whom you were laughing? Who is the subjective or nominative case of the word; in plain English, who acts as a subject or predicate nominative…most of the time. I don’t know who you are. Who steals my purse steals trash. Whom is objective case; that is, it must be an […]
Toward? Towards? The British Bug Bites Again
An urgent request for help has just been received, and the Guru is ready to help. The question is “I’ve written a poem, and one of the lines is …’she is floating toward him.’ Is it toward or towards?” And the definitive answer is {drum roll, please} either one! That’s really helpful, isn’t it? Actually, […]
Take a Breath! Breathe, Breathe, Breathe!
breath, breathe: This one is simple, but it’s a very common mistake. Breath (breth with a soft /th/ sound) is the noun: I need to catch my breath. Take a deep breath and cough. Breathe (/breeeeeth/ with a hard /th/ sound) is the verb: Breathe in and out slowly, please. Don’t breathe the chlorine fumes. […]
The Grammar Guru Butts in and Corrects Everyone
I refuse to start pointing fingers or editing everyone’s blogs — I don’t have the time or the inclination to cultivate rabid enemies. But there are a few words that need to be defined so that we don’t keep using the wrong word and making ourselves look silly. Those in the know will notice that […]
Can You Cite the Site Where You Lost Your Sight?
The “site” trio seems to be causing some confusion nowadays, probably as a result of the “shorthand” used by instant messagers. This is another simple problem to unravel. A site (noun) is a place — virtual or actual — like a construction site or a website. To cite (verb) something is to quote from it or […]