Pondering Grammar

A frustrated grammarian speaks on all things grammar

  • I Compliment Your Complement

    This is a confusing pair of words for many, with complement often being used when a person means compliment. As the former is less frequently used in general, I don’t think they are often confused in the other direction.  A compliment is a kind comment or well wishes. For example: ‘I love your dress!’ or… Read more

  • I Need a Cue to Queue

    There’s a joke that the word queue is just the letter Q with four silent letters queued up after it, which gives you a hint at its meaning, if you don’t know. A queue is a line, either in-person or online. We don’t use it much in the US; this is used more in British… Read more

  • I Wonder as I Wander

    I have had this particular mix-up in mind for some time. When I typed the title, I realized that it sounded familiar, so I looked it up. Lo and behold: it’s a song! By the way, it is ‘lo and behold’ not ‘low and behold’. Lo is an archaic interjection, and the phrase as a… Read more

  • You Really Should Toe the Line

    Have you ever heard the idiom ‘toe the line’? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/toe-the-line, this phrase means to ‘do what you are expected to do without causing trouble for anyone.’ If you think about people lining up for a race, you can picture a literal interpretation of this idiom and it makes some sense.… Read more

  • Do You Pedal a Paddle Boat?

    In a recent episode of Wheel of Fortune the contestants struggled to solve the puzzle ‘Renting a pedal boat’. Along with many others, including one of my parents, I was confused by this. I have never heard of a pedal boat. After doing a little bit of research online, I came to find that what… Read more

  • I May Spill My Drink If You Don’t Stop Your Spiel

    The next set of misused words I’d like to address are spiel and spill. This is an interesting one as it’s not particularly common, and I believe the misuse comes entirely from a misunderstanding of the pronunciation of spiel.  It’s pronounced SPEEL, and sometimes SHPEEL, and is a speech or long-winded explanation. In some places,… Read more

  • Your Drivel Makes Me Weary

    – with contribution from my dear friend, Stacy The time has come for a new list of words people often mix up when they write. The first of these is drivel, which means nonsense, and the second is dribble, which means, essentially, drool.  People tend to try to use these words when they want to… Read more

  • The Apostrophe’s Place

    Do you see what I did in the title? There’s an apostrophe in the word apostrophe. It’s there for a particular purpose—in this case, to denote possession. I could also write this as ‘the place of the apostrophe’ as it would be said in some other languages like Spanish, but the apostrophe is a shortcut… Read more

  • The art of boustrophedon

    If you’ve never heard of boustrophedon, I’m about to show you what it is. Here it comes: In case you can’t read that, it says: Boustrophedon is the practice of writing forward on one line and backwards on the next. I should have practiced some more, as it’s been quite some time, but I find… Read more

  • Nevertheless, never never the less

    I must bring to your attention another pet peeve of mine. There are a number of words in the English language that are compound words, but are apparently quite confusing for most people to write. They are not sure if they should be written as one word or separate words. Nevertheless is one of these.… Read more