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My daughter recently asked me whether the correct word in this idiom was “deserts” or “desserts”. Feeling cocky, I asserted that the right word was obviously “desserts”, as in the sweet reward for a job well done. Well, I was wrong. And my teenager was gleeful. The word “desert” means “that which is deserved”. It […]

I have a dog named Marko. He is a German shepherd and weighs over 75 pounds; people generally consider him to be a big scary-looking dog. The mailman would rather walk around the block than come all the way to our door with the mail if Marko is nearby. And you can forget about the

On September 19, 2010, Gene Weingarten published an article in The Washington Post titled “Goodbye Cruel Word: English, It’s Dead to Me.” Here are some excerpts. The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the “youngest”

I am distressed when I see otherwise educated people making silly mistakes. People judge your professionalism and intelligence by the way you use words, so please, use language correctly. For example, take the word drown. The past tense of drown is drowned. The process of becoming drowned is drowning. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not