It’s incredible how such a little punctuation mark as the apostrophe has the power to change the meaning of a word. The real challenge comes when deciding where to place the apostrophe to denote the possessive singular or the plural possessive form of a word, as in customer’s compared to customers’. Use customer’s with the …

Just when you thought you had a perfect command of English, we thought we’d ask you a question to test your level of expertise. Is it correct to say, “but rather?” Even if your answer is yes, we need to make sure that you fully understand the context in which we use it. It is …

“Please be advised” is another one of those English phrases that you’ve probably come across. We use it most often with formal, written settings where someone wishes to inform you of something. However, there are instances where you’ll hear someone speaking the phrase, particularly while delivering official announcements. It is correct to say “please be …

In today’s society, we place a tremendous amount of pressure on our children to succeed—not simply in school alone but also in finding overall success throughout their lives. This leads many of us to question just how much pressure we should put on our kids when teaching them how to learn from their mistakes. Parents …

In his engaging book, The Sense of Style, Steven Pinker talks of writing style as “the effective use of words to engage the human mind.” There are rules of written and spoken language, but many of these rules are contradictory or specific to the writer/speaker’s culture and his or her audience. Such is the case …

The number of technicalities and exceptions to grammatical rules in English can be discussed and broken down. Still, variables need to exist to allow for the usage of specific phrases, such as “which in turn.” “Which in turn” means “because of that” or “one after the other.” You can use the phrase “which in turn” …