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It is our tendency in English to, once we establish a pattern, cut the language down. Instead of saying, "I went to the store; I did not go to the bank," we often cut the second sentence down to a ...

The rule is that the first word of a quote is capped if it begins a grammatically complete thought or anything that stands for a complete thought. Otherwise, it is lowercase. ...Q Where were you ...

"Not only/but (also)" is one of the correlative coordinate conjunctions. It connects grammatically equal parts. The word "also" is often left out or moved to a later position in the sentence, and i...

The rule is that a prefix is added to the front of a word to make a solid word. ...preordained ...postprandial ...overrated ...underfed However, when there is already a word that has a different ...

When a word is made up but it has a normal, regular English spelling, put a pair of quotes around it rather than using sic or verbatim to point it out as an error. ...She was just acting "obliviat...

Capitalize the first word after a colon only when it begins a complete sentence. ...This is what I want to know: What day did he arrive? ...This is what I want to know: the day he arrived. ...He ...

When the words are "a" hundred or "a" thousand, there is a problem for the person who wishes to keep it as close to verbatim as possible. Technically, "a hundred" and "a thousand" are not numbers a...

Numbers in the thousands are expressed in figures with a comma and can never be a combination of figures and words. ...sent 45,000... ...received 133,000 of them... ...offered 50,000 for it... Wh...

When a surname has the word the in front of it, the name has to be plural -- without regard to how it is pronounced. ...The Millers have a new car. ...We spent the time with the Wilsons. There is...