You've probably been told you should write in active voice, but do you know why? And do you know how to identify it?
Active voice puts the person or thing doing something front and center — and that actually improves reading comprehension. If you want people to understand what you're writing (and who doesn't?), active voice helps!
A great trick for testing if a sentence is in passive voice is to see if you can add "by zombies" to the end ... 
Just heard a "grammar expert" interviewed on CBC suggest that "fewer than 53 pounds" was preferred, because 53 is countable.
Noooo...
Weight is a measurement, with uncertainty, that is not restricted to natural numbers. That pig might be 53.13±0.05 pounds. "Less than" should be the correct usage.
Tagging @grammargirl! What do you think? Do some measurements fall into a grey area because we often express them in nice, round umbers (like our weight)?
I’m seeing more writing online in which “renown” (noun) is misused in place of “renowned” (adjective). The latest example came in the email yesterday morning at the top of one of my favorite weekday newsletters, Numlock:
“Japan’s anime industry has become globally renown, but...”
TIL “used to” and “use to” serve different grammatical purposes. I always used to think “use to” was wrong because I thought it was supposed to be past tense, but that’s not the case. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-used-to-or-use-to
this year's crop of languages picked by students in my 1st year morphosyntactic typology class. Over the next 12 weeks they'll sketch the fundamentals of word classes, predication, possession, locatives, and a few more things based on the reference grammars they've selected.
The widespread availability of open access grammars (which we track on Grammar Watch https://linguistic-typology.org/grammarwatch/ ) has the effect of diversifying the languages chosen #grammar #linguistics
Finally took some time to polish and publish Eloquent.
It's a proofreading assistant, that works fully offline; powered by LanguageTool.
@ProjectFearlessness I agree with your message. But please add a hyphen to clarify the relationship between JD #Vance and couches. JD Vance is a "Nazi couch-fucker", because, as far as I know, there are no #nazi couches. Only couches that are oppressed and abused by nazis.
@NanoRaptor The PDF link doesn't seem to work anymore. Here's an archive URL of this beautiful poster/grammar:
A thing about language that a lot of people don't know is that you can dislike a usage intensely – a pronunciation, a piece of grammar, etc. – without presuming to reject it on behalf of all people, in all places, for all time
I need a lark grammar generator... hypothesis included is not extensible enough it seems
Seriously considering making another filter, to hide all posts within which is the egregious
off of
While the Supreme Court’s politics have veered right, the court’s language has gotten surprisingly progressive. Justices now use contractions, casual language, and personal pronouns to make their opinions more accessible to the public. https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-is-unabashedly-liberal-in-its-writing-style-245503 #grammar #scotus #punctuation
As a grammar prescriptivist, I take writing and proper use of words very seriously. I recently saw a post about ending text messages with full stops. Apparently, some think this is a bad idea. No. It's called using punctuation correctly! Perhaps, they should read a few grammars instead of playing their silly video games! The same is true of netspeak, textspeak, corporate spaek, and abbreviating everything. Likewise, I have no use for political correctness. I refuse to use words such as visually-challenged, vertically-challenged, etc. I will say blind (or visually impaired if the person has some vision), short, fat, etc. Unless I'm writing poetry and am seeking flowery words for things, I call them what they are. I also have no time for so-called gender-neutral words, unless they honestly make sense and are actually descriptive, such as firefighter or police officer. But I'm just as likely to say fireman, policeman, waiter, steward, actor, chairman, etc. and change the gender when necessary. I also refuse to use the singular they. There are two sexes (gender is for grammar). You're either one or the other. This absolutely doesn't mean that you can't change your sex. If, for example, I meet you as a woman and you change to a man or are a drag king/queen, I will certainly change my use of pronouns when discussing you or talking about you, either permenantly or temporarily, as the case requires. But unless you literally have multiple personalities or are a machine or an inanimate object, you are neither a they nor an it, and you're certainly not some made-up pronoun such as xe. I would never cause harm to those who use such words. I would just consider them to be silly or confused.
Overview paper on Generative approaches to #Germanic #Syntax:
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008757
I used light version of #HPSG to explain basic phenomena like SOV, SVO order. V2 and V1 was covered by SLASH mechanisms known from GPSG and Categorial Grammar. Passive and case assignment is also covered.
What's with English, I can speak it because I learned it through internet. But WTF is present perfect simple? I have grammar exam tomorrow
Walmart.
I am asking anyone and everyone that sees this post to share it far and wide. I have winced while walking under this sign in too many Walmart stores for too long. Let’s get this fixed and save the apostrophe.
Dear #Walmart,
For the love of god, please fix these signs in your stores. “Boy’s” indicates the department belongs to one boy.
The boys’ department should be shown as “Boys’”.
This makes your store chain look stupid, and it’s not a good look.
Is this sentence grammatical?
Saying "better planned" would be fine, so why not this?
But "nicer" isn't describing a noun here, so it should be an adverb.
Michael Porter 
