Stationary or stationery. One means unmoving, the other means pencils and the like. Ready to pen — er, pin down which is which? Let's get going. Stationery refers to writing materials, while stationary means ‘not moving’. The most frequent mistake people...
Is your writing feeling a bit flabby and out of shape? Treat it to a one-month detox treatment by following these three rules. Get active The active voice is more direct, dynamic and accountable. ‘The Government took no action’ is better than ‘No...
The basic Twitter.com platform is surprisingly inflexible. For example, it doesn’t allow you to schedule tweets for later, monitor how many people have clicked on your links, combine multiple accounts or view more than one stream of information at a time. So most...
[Important editor's note: this post was originally published in December. OK, on we go.] Seasons greetings, Rudolph here. It has come to my attention that some of you humans are getting in a pickle about rein and reign, so I thought I’d spare 60 seconds to sort...
A quick question from blog reader Jo, who asks: I recently watched a television interview with David Cameron during which he used the term 'stadia' as the plural of stadium. It sounded very affected, but is it correct? Stadia is indeed the correct Latin plural of...
Blog reader Paul asks: I’ve seen ‘fast’ and ‘quickly’ used as though they were interchangeable. Is this correct? Strictly speaking, fast is an adjective while quickly is an adverb. Fast refers to speed, and quickly refers to time. For...
You’ve spent the past three or four years writing essays and reports, and now you're in your first professional job and ready to start writing for business. But does your degree have you covered? Well, yes and no, writes Cathy Relf. The good news is that because...
Should you write: a) 'Last autumn, I led the Pegasus project', or b) 'Last autumn, I lead the Pegasus project'? The answer is a). Led is the past tense and past participle of the verb to lead. The confusion arises for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the verb to read...
What do data, bacteria, agendas and paninis all have in common? Their ability to ignite a singular vs plural debate. Why so much confusion? Well, firstly, it comes down to how you view foreign words that have been incorporated into English. Should they retain the...
Is it complimentary or complementary? Of course, it depends. This is one of the trickiest homophones to remember, partly because the spellings are only one letter apart, and partly because there is no good reason for the difference (both stem from the Latin complere,...
A book about fonts does sound a little dull on first impression, I’ll admit, writes Gordon MacDonald. Who really cares about the shape of letters? What next, a book about the cultural and historical significance of toenail clippers? I made the (understandable) mistake...
Adverbs convey information about how things happen, as well as when, where and to what extent. As the name suggests, they modify verbs – but they can also modify adjectives, other adverbs and whole sentences. For example, in the sentence ‘I need to see you urgently,’...