Generally speaking, the rules of a language follow the same patterns. For example, when speaking English and asking a question, the subject of the question almost always comes before the main verb, while an auxiliary verb such as “do” or “have” precedes the subject. However, that hasn’t always been the case. The further back we …
English
Punctuation-related decisions, particularly with commas, seem to be a chicken and egg situation, even for the most prolific writers. Why? This is because, contrary to what most people think, that commas are strictly governed by prescriptive rules, they actually aren’t. This is why we tend to easily get caught in the weeds when writing certain …
The US has always had to do things differently than the rest of the world. For starters, there must have been a point in time when everybody decided that the metric system is the way to go, but then Americans said, “Nah, we’re sticking to imperial units even though it makes no sense and is …
Both music and the industry surrounding it have enriched the English language with countless words and expressions, many of which we use on a daily basis without even noticing. Don’t believe me? Here are a few examples of the many options out there. The word “diss” comes from the early years of hip hop. Rappers …
At some point, the comedy gods decided there were six main styles of humor that a person could display. Who were these people that made this decision and why six? Who knows. But the six main types were considered slapstick, satire, observational, surreal, dark, and dry humor (also known as deadpan). What Is Dry …
We often notice the phrase “looking forward to working with you” in business-related discourses. But, what does it exactly mean? And, is it even grammatically correct? I’ve covered the subtleties behind this topic in detail, so keep scrolling down to understand more. Is the phrase “looking forward to working with you” grammatically correct? This …
Ever since I can remember, homonyms have confused me. Now, if you don’t know what a homonym is, you don’t have to jump to another page to Google it. Simply put, two words are considered homonyms when they sound exactly the same but have different meanings. They might have the same or different spellings. My …
I’m a 90s child, and let me tell you this much. They were a fun time to be alive. Furbies were everywhere. Friends dominated the airwaves. Alanis Morissette kept screaming about ironic situations even though none of them were really ironic when you thought about them. (After all, what’s ironic about a traffic jam when …
A lot of the words we feature on the Linguaholic blog are relatively recent in origin, or have been popularized in part due to the Internet. Others are ancient, and have grown and changed with the English language for hundreds of years. The expression in this post is somewhere in the middle. Read on and …