Love of Language

What many people call a dash is actually a hyphen. A hyphen has no spaces around it, except when it is used to indicate a "minus" sign. The hyphen is…

If you're going to thank him, spell "development" correctly. (There's an extra e.)

An ampersand (that's the name for &) is, like contractions, considered too informal to use in a scientific text. Some citation style guides (like APA that nurses use) use author…

"Part and parcel" is a bastardization of a Latin medical term for passed through birth: pari passu.

et al. is short for et alia (and others). It is generally used in English for lists of people.. It is generally used in English when referring to people. "The…

e.g. is used for one example from what could be a longer list. i.e. is used for when you want to define one thing specifically. Example: The person writing this…

Predominately (with an e) is an adverb (describes an action). Predominantly (with two ns) is an adjective (describes an object). Example: We predominately interviewed extraterrestrials, so we got opinions from…

Okay, not wrong, but misunderstood. When the dictionary tries to tell you what the beginning of a word means, it uses a hyphen to indicate that it is a prefix.…

He has many names: the serial comma; the Oxford comma; the Harvard comma. It is the comma used before the last item in a list: red, white, and blue. Style…