Possessives come up a lot in this column. That’s no surprise. They’re some of the most perplexing issues in English, as we saw in our recent column on Jess’s vs. Jess’ (P.S. both are acceptable). But ...

Have you ever corrected someone mid-conversation because what he said just didn't sound right? What I'm talking about is words that sound like plurals and possessives but shouldn't be and vice versa.

A natural follow-up to my last column about words that live in the plural seemed to be one about words that don't get the regular "s" at the end. Certain words shun the final "s" to become plural.

It’s spring cleaning time — an opportunity to sweep out dust bunnies lurking in recesses of recent reading. Let’s start with various forms of disagreement between singular and plural elements in a ...

Algae thrives in sunlight. Or is it algae thrive? These are the questions that can broadside a copy editor years, even decades, into her career. When it comes to English, there’s never a point where ...

Q: I drive a school bus, and this morning one of my seventh graders said to me, “Monte, did you see those deers on the side of the road?” I explained to him that certain words, like “deer,” are both ...

Sometimes Google will show one or the other and sometimes not. It depends and that is why you need to try different things and make sure to understand how your prospects will search for your products ...

See that mouse next to your computer? Pretend there are two of them. What would you call them: “mice” or “mouses”? In the first 15 years or so of its mainstream life, the computer mouse has had an ...