Of the seven topics I write about, grammar tends to be the most popular. Here’s a look at my 20 most-read 2023 grammar posts.
I make sure I cover one particular topic every single week: Grammar. One might wonder why I didn’t make this an all-grammar blog. Honestly, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep the blog going long-term. I also feared I might get bored with the topic over time. Fortunately, the latter did not happen. I decided I would kick off 2024 with a look back at my most-read 2023 grammar posts.
If you missed any of them the first time around, I hope you’ll enjoy them this time!
20. Happy Belated Birthday? That’s Not the Way to Say It!
How many times have you seen someone write “Happy Belated Birthday” on your Facebook profile if they miss the specific day? Maybe they send a card a couple of days late and you find that same message inside.
Someone’s “public service announcement” post made me realize that I, too, had been doing it wrong all this time.
19. Would These Common Idioms Help People Learn English Faster?
From time to time, I write about idioms. They’re phrases that have a bigger, deeper meaning than might appear at face value. Most native speakers understand, for example, that “taking something with a grain of salt” has nothing to do with adding an insignificant amount of seasoning to one’s dinner.
But non-native speakers often get hung up by such expressions because they never heard the context behind them.
Would knowing such phrases help them learn English faster?
18. Subject vs. Predicate: Remember the Predicate?
If you ask most kids these days what the opposite of a subject is in a sentence, they’d probably say verb. I’m old enough to remember learning all about something called a predicate. Do you remember those?
17. Latine or Latinx? One Term is Gaining in Popularity
I have heard the term Latinx. But I had not heard the term Latine, a relative newcomer, until recently. That discovery prompted me to write this article and explain why that new term is gaining popularity.
16. Why Tank Tops Came to Be Called ‘Wife Beaters’
The curious — and disturbing nickname — for the popular undergarment has been around for nearly 80 years. The inspiration for this nickname, it turns out, came from a true case of domestic violence.
15. How Long Must We Say ‘Formerly Known as Twitter’?
I often write about The Associated Press Stylebook, a style guide written specifically for journalists in newsrooms around the globe. Since my real job does involve use of AP Style, I occasionally address things I like and dislike about their rulings.
In this case, as someone who has to write “formerly known as Twitter” a few times a week, I had to ask what felt like an obvious question.
14. Is Queer an Acceptable Term for the LGBTQ+ Community?
Within every group, you will find disagreement over words used to describe their members. There was a time when the word queer was a slur against members of the LGBTQ+ community. Some members, however, use the term themselves.
But that particular usage is definitely not universal.
13. ‘Fatal Drowning’? Isn’t That Redundant?
This is one of my pet peeves in a news story. In fact, a headline actually inspired this post. But yes, if there is a drowning, there is, by definition, a death.
12. How Many Periods to End a Sentence Do You Need?
Most people would insist there can only be a single answer: one period at the end of a sentence. Technically, that’s true. But there is a case when a sentence might end with what appears to be four periods.
11. Twitter or X? AP Style Makes a Ruling
Elon Musk made the branding decision many marketing experts still chuckle about when he renamed what had become a household name to a letter. At first, people assumed he must be joking.
It became clear he wasn’t. But some writers still wondered if they were really supposed to throw out references to “Twitter” in favor of “X.” AP Style made its verdict.
10. So How are We Supposed to Pronounce Uranus?
You can pronounce our seventh planet two different ways. The first way places an accent on the first syllable. The second places the accent on the second. The second comes with the added bonus of causing snickers from people who associate that pronunciation with a certain body part.
9. Opossom or Possum? What’s With that Extra O?
Here in the South, we call those ugly little marsupials possums. We don’t pronounce the O and we often don’t even write it. But the word is properly written with that extra — and silent — letter.
8. Why We Say, ‘Take It With a Grain of Salt’
This popular idiom, as I already mentioned above, is a common one we see every day. I think it can be fun to see how such expressions come into language.
7. Turkey or Turkiye? Who Gets to Decide?
The country we know as Turkey doesn’t spell its own name that way. There was a growing movement this year to spell the country’s name properly. The country itself actually adds a diacritical mark over the U. But most people in the U.S. are never going to go that far.
6. Flounder or Founder? Both Can Involve Water
When you look at the verb forms of these two distinct words, you realize how close — and how different — they are in meaning. One can refer to a struggle while the other can refer to failing altogether.
5. ‘Without Further…’ — Is it Adieu or Ado?
This post focuses on a pair of homophones: Words that sound the same but that are spelled differently and have different meanings. For the answer, I referred to the writings of William Shakespeare.
4. Add a Plus: LGBTQ Should Be LGBTQ+, AP Style Says
For full representation, the initialism LGBTQ should actually be — at the very least — LGBTTIQQ2SA. Many people have no idea what some of those mean, even once they learn what one of those extra letters stands for.
AP Style recommended adding a plus sign after the Q to help be more inclusive. (And, apparently, not confuse the readers with all of those extra letters.)
3. Should ‘Barbershop’ Be One Word or Two?
For this one to rank so high in my list of most-read 2023 grammar posts, I figure many people must have asked this question. I consulted the aforementioned Associated Press Stylebook and found they have no listing for it. Apparently, their editors don’t seem to care one way or the other. It appears some barbers don’t seem to be concerned, either.
2. AP Style Addresses New Term for Child Porn
There’s a new push for a new term: Child sexual abuse material. That term, some experts insist, is a more appropriate term for what everyone once called “child pornography.” Their reasoning depends on the notion of consent.
When you think about it, that’s an absurd argument because a child can’t legally give consent for anything.
But unfortunately, even AP Style adopted this absurdity into its rules…so now newsrooms everywhere are stuck with it.
1. The Right Way to Respond to a ‘Would You Mind’ Question
If I were to try to predict my most popular grammar post of the year, I doubt this one would ever have occurred to me. But you can never fully predict these things. I suppose this is a sign that the “would you mind” construction trips up a lot of people.
That’s a look at my most-read 2023 grammar posts. I hope you enjoyed the trip back down memory lane and I hope you’ll keep reading in 2024.
