In certain situations, you may be required to refer to somebody by an honorific or some respectful form of address. In Japan, you may call an older coworker or classmate “Senpai.” If you work at a grocery store, then it’s polite to refer to a male customer as “Sir.” In a similar vein, it’s polite …
English
An important medical research organization is holding a conference, and they’re inviting doctors, researchers, and other medical professionals from all around the world. There will be people from China, Brazil, Russia, Norway, and many other countries at this event. However, many of these medical professionals don’t speak the same language. Norwegian and Chinese are a …
You can’t always be right. It’s easy to assume that you know the answer, but when you find out that you were wrong, you must be sure to handle it gracefully. After all, everybody is wrong once in a while. While some people try to act like they’re right no matter what, those people are …
“After all the starts and stops, we keep coming back to these two hearts.” Peter Cetera and Cher’s wedding song instantly played in my head upon seeing this topic. A comma doesn’t really fit after “after all” in the song’s hook, but a comma seems necessary in “after all, he’s your dad.” Why is this …
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 …
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 …