We did two newsletters last year on was vs. were to cover a couple of different grammatical rules: collective nouns and the subjunctive mood. And while you didn't struggle on the subjunctive mood quiz, "couple" proved trickier: "Was" won out on the newsletter quiz, but when we posted the same question on LinkedIn, we got the opposite response. There are more than a couple of ways to use "couple." One is that it's essentially a collective noun meaning a set of romantic partners, but even then,...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Quick, without looking anything up, can you tell if the following sentences are correct? ❓A monarch takes the reins at the start of her reign. ❓He had free reign to develop new strategies. ❓After more than a decade on the job, she knew how to hold the reins during times of chaos. One of those sentences contains a phrase that was the subject of one of the closest quizzes we did in 2025. And if you spotted the incorrect sentence, you know which phrase it is. We had covered reign and rein in...
16 days ago • 2 min read
All right, now that you've *just* gotten used to writing "2026" instead of "2025," quick question: Is it EST or EDT when you're writing a time zone? Luckily, this time of year doesn't add more confusion to writing the time and date. When we asked you about time zones in the spring, you were split on whether to use "EST" or "EDT": At the time, the correct answer was "EDT." Here's more from our newsletter revealing the answer: In time zone abbreviations, the "S" stands for "standard," and the...
23 days ago • 1 min read
Happy 2026! Even though it's a new year, we're continuing the wrap-up of our quiz series with the answers to our trickiest questions. Before the holiday break, we reviewed the phrase nerve-racking. Now, we're onto whoever vs. whomever. Well, that was the fill-in-the-blank in the quiz question. But the lesson is really about subjects and objects and noun clauses. Here's the question that tripped up most of you: So "whomever" is the correct answer there, but it's not as simple as just using...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The end of the year is approaching, which means it's wrap season. Gift wrapping, sure, but also the time of year when we get wrap-ups of our habits and behaviors. If you answered our quiz questions this year, you can pat yourself on the back: There were only a few questions that a majority of quiz respondents got wrong. Great work 👏 We're wrapping up our quiz series with a look back at those trickier questions and reviewing the lessons, starting with the one that tripped up the most people:...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
We're back after the Thanksgiving break to revisit one of our first holiday-themed newsletters from 2022. Hope your holiday season is off to a good start! Now that we got our “Yule” pun out of the way in the subject line, here’s where we let you know that even though you’ll see both “Yule” and “yule” this holiday season, we recommend capitalizing it both on its own and in “Yuletide.” (And if you see it all the time and wonder what it really means, it’s basically a synonym for “Christmas.”) No...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Every one of our newsletters is designed to give you a writing tip you can use in your everyday life. See what we did there? If you remember last week's quiz, you might already know whether or not you got the right answer. If you need a refresher, we quizzed you on the use of "every one/everyone" and "every day/everyday." And most of you got it right! You needed the two-word versions of each term to correctly complete the sentence: "Every one of them noticed the mural as they walked past it...
3 months ago • 1 min read
It's hard to miss a mural that spans an entire block. It's much easier to overlook missing commas. One word would have changed the answer to last week's quiz, which most of you got right: Here's the correct sentence: "The mural, which spans the entire block, is being restored." However, if you change "which" to "that," the correct answer is none. Why? Which introduces nonessential clauses — that is, clauses that don't change the main point of the sentence. That introduces essential clauses,...
3 months ago • 1 min read
There wasn't a full moon on Halloween, but you might have glimpsed one earlier this week. Either way, you don't capitalize "moon," or "sun," for that matter. That was the first of the errors in last week's quiz. Here's the sentence again: "The full Moon was the perfect compliment to their night of trick or treating." So how many did you spot? For most of you, it was three, the same number we counted. The other two were "compliment," which should be complement, and "trick or treating," which...
3 months ago • 1 min read