usage

Adverbs (words ending in -ly) almost never need to be hyphenated. This is a continually nagging problem in my text-editing work.

When two words combined define another word, they need a hyphen. They form one object-defining word.

If you "try and" understand it, you understand it. You can "try to" understand it. But if you succeed, then the trying is over.

And you can’t yell opinions in a crowded laboratory. You have to be aware of the qualitative assumption of your words. I recently edited a text where the author wrote,…

Increasingly, science journals are including in their instructions to omit "claims of primacy." This means phrases like "Ours is the first study to . . . " or "This is…

A method-ology is merely a method that someone is trying to make sound more important. It is adding a noun ending to a noun. Odder still is that the ending…

Its (possessive) vs. it's (it is). Is it hard to remember which one of these gets its apostrophe? It's.

Increasingly, I see people writing, as did a recent client about doing something, ". . . with the goals to educate and train. . . ." The problem is a…

To is a problem, too. To means direction; the word for also has an extra "o" too.

There there; everyone has trouble with these three. People: they're having trouble picking their word to use there.