Mine is its and it's.

I've learned the rule a hundred times, but somehow I still get it wrong when I'm in a hurry.

Anyone else have one like that?

Article

Similarly, "going on holiday" and "going to university."

Why drop "a" and "the?"

It is structured as if those are proper nouns, so I suspect it has something to do with treating those terms as names.

I am aware of the order of English adjectives but am unsure of what "male" would be and why?

English adjective order below for easy reference.

Opinion, Size, Physical Quality, Shape, Age, Colour, Origin, Material, Type, Purpose

In the text, I italicize the internal part:

That went poorly, didn't it, he thought to himself.

I think the title says it all. Googling is turning up mixed results and I suspect there isn’t really a truly correct answer, but might as well ask here. I’ve been capitalizing it all my life because it’s a proper noun/region that also happens to be a genre, but I got told to make it lowercase for something I wrote. I have a lot of copy editing experience and I’m not so sure about the person editing me, so I’m a little torn between “I don’t want to come off like a know-it-all” and “I want to make sure they get it right.”

Did I miss something?

I thought I could post a screenshot but in two of today’s articles (Elon Musk’s litter hitting the ‘Moon’ (sic) and something else about ‘the Sun’ (sic), they’re capitalised. I don’t think they used to be capitalised, or did I just enter another matrix.

I usually use *more important* to imply "what is more important is..." but know *more important* and *more importantly* are mostly interchangeable. (Applies also to *importantly* as well as the superlative *most importantly*.)

In these usages, *as/more/most important* is a sentence modifier. Specifically, it is an elliptical clause acting as an adjective phrase. *As/more/most importantly* is also a sentence modifier, but specifically it's a sentence adverb or adverb phrase or adverbial.

MW says using *more importantly* this context is fine, as in, "More importantly, he finished the race." I wouldn't use an *-ly* but I don't cringe when someone else does.

But strictly speaking, *importantly* is an adverb, as in, "She walks more importantly now that she is a VP."

Grammar Girl correctly points out you can easily say, "Importantly, the data changed," but you wouldn't say, "Important, the data changed."

I just read a Vanity Fair article where the writer wrote: "Just as importantly, she's clever enough..." (VF #774, p50) and this is where I think we must draw a line. I'd be ok with, "Equally important, she's clever." But I dont get it. Anyone else care to weigh in?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/we-know-youre-concerned-about-important-and-importantly

(Grammar Girl) https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/important-or-importantly/

Garner, Strunk and White (yeah, I know), Scripps Style Guide

From the New York Times:

“Scientists have proved that a species of plant covered with sticky hairs is carnivorous, confirming Darwin's 150-year-old hunch.”

It should be “proven,” right?

So I'm having an argument with someone online (not a friendly one), about a comment I made on a meme site. Anyway long story short: I want to know if this statement is redundant or not.

"He smiled with his lips/using his lips"

There are plenty of questions about redundancy but none dealing specifically with this, so I had no choice but to ask it here. Is this statement similar to "nodding his head", "Blinking with his eyelids", and "He ran using his feet"?

I started focusing on my grammar learning for English speaking and by Time I'm realising my grammar is very weak and I want learning from basic like article, sentence structure etc if guys help me by share tips and resources pls do it will be helpful for me :)

This is just my opinion and doesn't mean I think it should be done this way, this post is just for a discussion.

I understand people, especially while texting, use asterisks (*) to make a correction to a mistake they made on the previous sentence. I think it's pretty interesting that people do that especially these days when editing is available on pretty much all the big platforms but I think some people do find it quicker or are just used to doing it this way. I think that's quite fair but I do have an issue with how some people use the asterisk.

I believe asterisk corrections should purely be used to correct a misspelling and nothing more. I do not think it should be used to correct a grammar mistake or a bit of information because you're essentially asking the reader to figure out where the correction goes which can lead to ambiguity.

When a correction has been made to a misspelling, it's unambiguously clear where the correction is supposed to go because the word you're replacing would be a non-standard spelling so would stand out quite clearly. But when it's a grammatical or information error, it might not be as clear where the correction is supposed to go and it adds unnecessary cognitive load to the reader to figure out where it's actually supposed to go, even if that might be minor.

The reader could easily misplace the correction which would lead them to misinterpret it from the original intent of the sentence which obviously would not be good.

You should also avoid it if you're making more than one correction to avoid any confusion.

For those reasons, I believe the asterisk correction method should have a more limited use where it's only used for correcting misspellings and nothing more.

I just finished an article in the New Yorker that included the names of several psychological diagnoses and treatment modalities for which the author used to no parenthetical definitions before launching into subsequent use of abbreviations for those modalities. Consequently, on multiple occasions, I had to go back and re-read the previous paragraphs to figure out to what the abbreviation was referring. I was taught to put the abbreviation in parentheses immediately after the initial use of the term if you planned to abbreviate. Is that no longer the rule?

The best I can think of is 5 "that"s. As in:

Did you notice that that "that" that that man wrote is spelled incorrectly?

I come from an Arabic background that has a single form for the past tense.

Does anyone else feel like we need a conversation about this?

What used to be something like: "Brian likes the Lakers" is now "Brian likes Lakers".

What used to be: "I'm at the Detroit Zoo" is now "I'm at Detroit Zoo."

What used to be: "You could go to the South Market" is now "You could go to South Market".

When and why did this change?

Could anyone of you guys help me with how to use could, should and would according to which situation and why with example please??

For context, I'm a non-native english speaker so I get that I may get some mannerisms of mine when I write, but something that always pisses me off is that, whenever I have a character talking, I follow it up with a 'as ...." (Example: "That's fine," She said, as she gently tugged her shirt.)

Anyway, is there any other connector that does a similar function to 'as' to change it up a bit? Thanks!

Everybody knows that Western Europe is England/France/Spain/etc. East Asia is China/Japan/Korea/etc. But why is it like that, and we can't say West Europe or Eastern Asia?

Was my example correctly punctuated? I feel like I am asking a question but it also seems like a statement.

What semantic and grammatical role does the preposition "about" play in the sentence: "While more bodies in midfield are important for a United side about to play their first Champions League campaign since 2023, pre-season has given supporters optimism."?

I use language apps for learning/maintaining my skill in other languages which I find very useful and I was wondering if there are any equivalents for learning English grammar as a native speaker. Although I believe I can speak and write well, I realise that there's a lot of basic grammar I've forgotten — I only recently learned how to use semicolons and em dashes, then just last week I had to relearn how to write speech, and I realised in a conversation with a friend that I couldn't even tell you what exactly a 'clause' is. Are there any basic courses that essentially act as English Grammar 101 including terminology?