英语语法：91 Subject-Verb Agreement

Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is subject-verb agreement, and I'm doing something a little different. This week I have a guest writer for the show, my long-time copy editor Bonnie Trenga, the author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier. Oh

英语语法：92 Subjunctive Verbs

[Note: I originally covered this topic September 16, 2006. The transcript you see now on the page is a new version that was updated March 5, 2009. Some of the reader comments at the bottom relate to the earlier version.] Grammar Girl here. Today's to

英语语法：93 Swear Words in Text

Grammar Girl here. Today's show is still work-safe and family-friendly, but we're going to talk about how to deal with swearing in novels, quotations, and other types of text. My friend Scott Sigler and I were talking about his new book, The Rookie,

英语语法：94 The The -- The Double The

Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is the the, not as in the British '80s band, but as in what to do when a sentence calls for a the in front of a name or title that starts with a the, like The New York Times. So, listener Rob Jones asked, Do I have to

英语语法：95 Used to Versus Use to

Grammar Girl here. About a month ago I answered a bunch of short listener questions, and I promised I'd answer a few more short ones soon. Well, today's the day! Use to Versus Used to Hi, Grammar Girl. This is Barrett in Nantucket on Nantucket Island

英语语法：97 Between Singular and Plural Nouns

Grammar Girl here. Today guest-writer Bonnie Trenga will help us talk about tricky sentences that make you question whether you should use a singular or plural verb. Today were talking about a tricky kind of sentence that causes you to make a mistake

英语语法：98 Went Missing

Grammar Girl here. Everyone else seems to be announcing a word of the year, so I've decided to name a pet peeve of the year. After a non-scientific study of the messages I get from listeners, I've determined the pet peeve of 2008 is the phrase went m

英语语法：99 What Is Poetic License?

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, so today we're going to ponder poetic license. What is Poetic License When describing writing, you say people are taking poetic license when they use language in a way that isn't normal or correct.

英语语法：100 What Is Subject-Complement Agreement?

Grammar Girl here. In todays episode were going to answer some bizarre and puzzling questions: Can two people share a life? Can two writers share a neck? How many heads does a person have? How many wives do certain men have? Today's guest-writer, Bon

英语语法：115 Apostrophe Catastrophe (Part One)

Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is apostrophes. When I was in second grade, I lost a spelling bee because I misspelled the word its. I put an apostrophe in when I shouldn't have, and it was a very traumatic moment in my young life. So when listeners

英语语法：114 Abbreviations, Acronyms

Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is the difference between abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms. It's kind of an extension of the last episode, because I want to clarify the difference between abbreviations and acronyms. Any shortened form of a w

英语语法：113 Zeroscape Versus Xeriscape

图片1 Photo courtesy of Laura Herman, Tampa, Florida Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is the word xeriscape. This is kind of a self-indulgent podcast for me. I've been house hunting lately, and I swear if one more real estate agent tells me about a

英语语法：112 Wordiness And Idioms

Grammar Girl here. Today I'm going to play two listener comments that will lead us to a discussion of wordiness and idioms. Wordiness First, here's Tod in Canada from the todbits.com website: Can you help me correct people? Everyone that I know seems

英语语法：111 British English and American English

Grammar Girl here. Saturday is the Fourth of July, also known as the American holiday Independence Day. I'm American and I think it's fair to say we love the British now--we give British royalty a royal welcome when they visit America--but Saturday i

英语语法：110 Who Versus Whom--Advanced

Grammar Girl here. It was almost exactly a year ago when I did the first show about who versus whom. In that show I only covered the simple cases, and lately I've been getting questions that made me think I should delve deeper into the topic. So toda

英语语法：108 When to Use Articles Before Nouns

Several listeners have written with questions on when to use the definite article the, the indefinite article a, or neither. For example, Tracy W. wrote, Which is correct: Thank you for taking time to review my application, or Thank you for taking th

英语语法：107 When to Leave Out "That"

Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is the word that. When do you need it, and when can you leave it out? Also, I'll have an announcement at the end of this show about extra book giveaways and my book tour. Now, guest-writer Bonnie Trenga writes, Today

英语语法：106 When Should You Capitalize Words?

Grammar Girl here. In today's episode, well talk about capitalizationits overuse and its misuse in the business world. Lets talk about why capitalization of some words is a capital idea, and why uppercasing other words could be considered a capital o

英语语法：105 When Should You Capitalize Titles?

Grammar Girl here. Last week we talked about capitalizing words in the business world. Today we're going to talk about capitalization in general. If you recall, in English, we capitalize proper nounswords that name a specific thing or person, words s

英语语法：104 When Is "W" a Vowel?

Grammar Girl here. Todays topic is when a consonant is a vowel. When I was out on my book tour, someone at the Third Coast Coffee Roasting Company in Austin asked me whether the w is ever a vowel. I was stumped, but I promised to look into it. Guest-