The couple is going to purchase the house? Or the couple are going to purchase the house? Even after all my years of editing, I can still get tripped up trying to make verbs agree with collective ...

IntroductionIf you have one dog, you say, "I have a dog." If you have two, you say, "I have two dogs."dog → dogs, cat → cats.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about English grammar and usage — most of which I promptly forgot. And not for lack of use. Every day I apply what I’ve learned to catch and fix writers’ mistakes.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, goes the Dr. Seuss children’s story. Why isn’t it two fishes? You may think, “Ok, it’s hard to count fish so we group them all together. No problem.” Let’s ...

In English, there are certain nouns that have specific rules for forming their plural forms when they end in “-f”, “-fe”, or “-o”. These rules help maintain the correct pronunciation and spelling of ...

The usual way to modify a noun in English is to put an adjective before the noun: nice view, tasty treat, hot day. But every once in a while, we put the adjective after the noun. Often this is because ...