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 ...

Call us odd, but in my family we sometimes pretend that the plural of a compound word follows the odd pattern that "passer-by" and "mother-in-law" follow, and make the plural of a word like "bookcase" ...

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 ...

The word data leaves some of us in a conundrum. Data is the plural of datum, the Latin word for something given. Ordinarily, the plural word would get a plural verb. The chickens are on their nests.

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 ...

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