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My 20 Most-Read Posts of 2024

A depiction of the year 2024 in neon numbersDeposit Photos

It’s time to take a look at the most-read posts of 2024. No matter what I consider my best posts this year, these received the most eyes.

While I cover a wide variety of topics here at Patrick’s Place. Year after year, when I look back at the posts that get the most views, I always find that posts from the grammar category are at the top. You’ll see that pattern repeat in my most-read posts of 2024.

In fact, in compiling this year’s most-read list, I find 15 of the top 20 fall in that section. My grammar category includes more than pure grammar. It also includes spelling, style questions and even some stories about popular phrases and idioms. Language is always multifaceted and so my grammar category is as well.

In any case, here are the 20 posts that received the most reads this year. Most of them weren’t written this year. That’s also normal for my stats. My most-read post of this past year, for example, is two years old. But that’s what can happen when you write “evergreen” posts that remain useful year after year.

Here are my most-read posts of 2024:

20. ‘Common Sense or Commonsense? One Word or Two?’

My tagline is “Regular doses of common sense.” Or should it be commonsense?

While it certainly seems true that there isn’t enough of either these days, there’s a slight difference between the two words and when each should be used.

This post is one of the oldest in my list. I wrote it back in 2015.

19. ‘Here’s How to Make Your Last Name Plural for Christmas Cards’

From one of the oldest posts on the list to one of the newest: This one was posted in early December.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve issued this timely reminder. It won’t be the last, I’m sure. There are still people who insist on using an apostrophe when they refer to the whole family with a plural last name.

Repeat after me: You don’t use apostrophes to make things plural. (There’s an exception, but you’ll almost never encounter that exception…so just accept it and govern yourselves accordingly!)

18. ‘TV Show Disclaimers Leave Some Viewers Fuming’

The world’s growing impatience with anything resembling wokeism helped inspire this post. These days, TV show disclaimers precede some shows we never considered would even need one. But by today’s standards, maybe they do.

I saw a couple of posts complaining about TV Land. It turns out that the network — and others — display a short line of text just before old Westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

It shouldn’t be difficult to guess the the depictions in those stories that might prompt a disclaimer these days.

17. ‘Is the Word ‘Picnic’ a Racist Term?’

Several posts on social media claimed recently the word picnic is a racist term and should be dropped from our language.

Even worse, the posts attempted to connect the word to a racial slur. One Florida politician reportedly didn’t want the word used to describe an annual gathering of city employees because the word had racist origins relating to the hanging of African Americans.

But something about the claims didn’t add up.

16. ‘Algorithm or Algorhythm? When the ‘Beat’ Goes Wrong’

It can be easy for many of us to want to misspell algorithm as “algorhythm,” since the second half of the word sounds like rhythm. It’s so easy, in fact, that twice while typing algorithm for this post, little red dotted lines reminded me that I’d succeeded in doing so myself.

But it might help you remember the correct spelling if you know that an algorithm isn’t related to rhythm.

15. ‘V. or Vs.? How to Use Versus Abbreviations Correctly’

When you’re writing about conflicts that pit one party against another, the word versus will eventually come into play. But sometimes, it’s appropriate to shorten the already-short word. So in case you’re ever tempted to wonder whether you should use v. or vs., here’s a quick refresher on the two versus abbreviations.

I wrote this post this year shortly after the 70th anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court case.

14. ‘Is it Hold Up or Holed Up?’

When we hear of someone hiding from authorities and we decide to write about it, are we supposed to use hold up or holed up? To answer correctly, you have to know about a rare idiom that confuses people these days, mostly because of the popularity of the more common phrase.

13. ‘The Right Way to Respond to a ‘Would You Mind’ Question’

I hear people make the mistake of incorrectly answering a question that begins, “Would you mind if…” all the time. They answer the question as if the speaker is saying, “May I…” rather than “Would you mind…” and yet everyone seems to understand.

12. ‘Why Some Banks Ask for ID for a Cash Deposit’

A funny thing happened to me back in 2018 when I went to my bank to make a cash deposit. When they demanded an ID before they’d let me make the deposit, I asked. Their reasoning surprised me.

So I wrote about it and found that people have apparently been experiencing the same phenomenon.

11. ‘Why Do People Place a Dollar Sign After a Numeral Online?’

When you’re talking about dollar amounts, all of us grew up placing the dollar sign in front of the numerals. It’s $20. It’s always $20.

At least, it used to be.

Now, when you go on social media, you see people writing it as “20$” instead. Yes, that’s written in the order we say it. But it’s not written the way it’s supposed to be written. The question is, why has this suddenly become a social media norm.

10. ‘Donder or Donner? Did Santa Change the Name of a Reindeer?’

When you list Santa Claus’s famous reindeers, do you list the seventh one as Donder or Donner?

If you’re like me, you’d have never second-guessed your answer until you were presented with both options. It seems like some of us of a certain age learned — correctly or incorrectly — one of the two. Now we find that we just might have learned the wrong one.

So I wrote this post five years ago to set the record straight. The fact that it made my top 10 list this year suggests the record still isn’t straight for everyone!

9. ‘How Long Must We Say ‘Formerly Known as Twitter’?’

A lot of my grammar-related posts focus on AP Style, a style convention described in The Associated Press Stylebook. Since my real job involves working in a newsroom, I have to rely on AP Style. For the most part, I carry that over to this blog as well, since it’s easier than juggling two completely different writing conventions.

When Elon Musk decided to rename Twitter to X, AP Style decided that journalists needed to write any reference to the platform as “X, formerly known as Twitter.”

But how long did that madness need to continue? We ultimately got the answer.

8. ‘How Do You Pronounce Pecan?’

Every Thanksgiving, when pecan pie becomes a popular dessert at the big feast, you can count on this discussion popping up.

Is it “PEE-can” or “pih-KHAN?” I often pronounce it “PEE-can” unless I’m talking about the flavor butter pecan. In that case, I pronounce it “butter pih-KHAN.”

In the South, where I am, the most common pronunciation, according to FarmFlavor.com, which actually mapped the pronunciation trends for the word, is “PEE-can.”

But people have lots of feelings on this silly little debate.

7. ‘Arctic vs Artic: A Big Difference Between the Two’

Arctic is one of the most frequently mispronounced words: people tend to drop the first C, pronouncing it artic. There’s no question that artic is easier to pronounce, because the first C in arctic requires an extra stop that prevents the word from rolling off one’s tongue as easily.

But ease of pronunciation is no excuse to use the wrong word when you mean something entirely different.

This post, by the way, is the oldest in the list. It was written in 2013, making it 11 years old! I suppose its age might make it qualify for the “oldie but a goodie” designation.

6. ‘Shut Down or Shutdown? Should It Be One Word or Two?’

Everytime we have stories about a potential shutdown of the government, there are questions about whether it should be one word or two. There are distinct reasons for each version. So that’s what I explained in this little post.

5. ‘Marshal or Marshall? Do You Really Need the Second L?’

Do you know when to choose marshal or marshall? I thought I did, but a little research indicates it isn’t as cut and dried as I thought it was.

I was fairly confident I knew when to choose which one. But sometimes, even when you reach a point of being certain about something in the English language, you realize it isn’t certain at all.

4. ‘The Story Behind the Phrase, “There’s Something Rotten in Denmark”‘

It can be fun to research the origin of idioms, those little phrases that have a unique meaning most of us understand, but that can confuse those who don’t. The funny thing about an idiom is that while it has a clear meaning, you wouldn’t necessarily deduce it from the on the surface.

The Denmark idiom came to us directly from William Shakespeare. The average person probably has absolutely no idea that the phrase came from a play written sometime around the year 1600.

Yet more than 400 years later, the phrase itself still makes an occasional appearance.

3. ‘Paregoric: One of the Best Medicines You Won’t Find Anymore’

There are some medicines that you can’t get anymore. In the case of paregoric, there’s a valid reason that it’s no longer prescribed.

When I was a kid, anytime I had a case of the stomach flu, my mom would add one teaspoon of paregoric to a glass of Coca-Cola. That one little teaspoon was enough to hit the stomach and being things to a nearly-immediate halt. I almost never needed a second dose.

There aren’t

2. ‘Suddenly Hearing Spanish on TV? Check Your Settings!’

We sometimes get calls in the newsroom at work from viewers who suddenly hear Spanish instead of English on their TV shows. They demand to know why we’d switch languages on them.

The problem, though, isn’t with the television station. There’s a little setting on your television that you’ve probably never even noticed that’s the likely culprit here. Accidentally dropping or bumping the remote can cause the problem.

So if you ever suddenly hear Spanish instead of English, be sure to remember this post to get things back to normal!

1. ‘Quotes or Italics? Citing Titles of Books, Movies & TV Shows’

When citing titles of songs, books, movies or tv shows, should you place them in italics or quotation marks?

There’s an easy way to know which to use when you cite book, movie and TV show titles. But the fact that there’s an easy way doesn’t mean it’s one you’ll like.

This was my most-read post. I don’t know why that one, which I wrote in 2022, reached number one, unless there were a lot of people in need of the answer to that particular question!


So those are my most-read posts of 2024. I hope you were able to catch them when they were new. But just in case you missed them the first time around, I hope you were able to find new reads here.

I wish you a happy 2025 and I hope you’ll be back to visit often!

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.
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