Merriam-Webster.com defines “work-to-rule” as “the practice by workers of refusing to do any work that is not strictly required as a part of their jobs in order to protest something (such as unfair working conditions).” Well, that’s too harsh for my purposes. But it hints
Those of us who use social media are used to seeing comments from sticklers who object to the slightest deviation from the grammar rules they learned. The following sentences would not likely pass their inspection. Can you tell why?
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He is chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary and often writes for the New York Times, Time, and the New Republic. After years of research and numerous books on visual cognition and the psychology of language, he has now . . .
Bill Walsh has been at the Washington Post’s copy desk for nearly two decades, riding out changes in both the newspaper business and the wider world of publishing. He helms their live grammar and style chat, Grammar Geekery with Bill Walsh, ruling on everything from hashtags to whether puns are encouraged at the Post.
Every day, Mignon Fogarty takes on questions ranging from where to properly place commas, to what is a gerund, to whether Pig Latin is considered a language.
