June Casagrande

Pasadena

June Casagrande's Grammar Underground, cutting through the grammar bull to help folks make the best choices in usage, sentence structure, punctuation & more.

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Articles

A Word, Please

1 week ago | polkio.com | June Casagrande

The dictionary is gaslighting me. I know I sound crazy, but that’s just proof of gaslighting, right? Let me explain. For years I’ve been telling people that they never have to agonize over whether to use “swam” or “swum,” “laid” or “lain,” “drank” or “drunk,” or “dreamed” or “dreamt” because the answers are in the dictionary. But only if you know how to find them. Most dictionaries contain instructions on how to use the dictionary.
A Word, Please: How this simple word can be intimidating

2 weeks ago | latimes.com | June Casagrande

The eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, contains about 5,500 galaxies and was assembled by combining images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope over 10 years. You probably don’t read a lot of books written in the 1820s. But if you did, you’d see the word “belie” a lot more. According to Google Ngram Viewer, in the early 1800s, “belie” appeared in books about four times as often as it does now. Maybe that’s why I find the word a little intimidating.
A Word, Please: Beefing over how we use hyphens and adverbs

1 month ago | latimes.com | June Casagrande

The beef had been aged dry for 30 days, and it changed my life. Not the way you’re thinking. I didn’t eat the life-changing meat. I just read about it in an article I was editing — and my relationship with hyphens has never been the same. Before then, I thought I had hyphens all figured out. Most of the time, they connect two words that work together to describe a noun, as in “heat-seeking missile.” The hyphen makes clear it’s not a heat missile. It’s not a seeking missile.
A Word, Please

1 month ago | polkio.com | June Casagrande

In the Netflix series “Umbrella Academy,” Aidan Gallagher plays Number Five, a 58-year-old assassin and theoretical physicist trapped in a 13-year-old’s body. A naturally brainy teen and gifted actor, Gallagher has no trouble convincing me Five is a late-middle-aged genius unlocking the mysteries of space-time to stop a world-ending apocalypse. In his performance, I believe every word — well, every word but one: nuclear.
Casagrande: 'Anemone' just one linguistic gaslighting word that falls under the term 'metathesis'

1 month ago | latimes.com | June Casagrande

Pronouncing (or even spelling) the word “anemone” challenges grammarian June Grande. And don’t get her started on how people say “nuclear.” But it’s all good. In the Netflix series “Umbrella Academy,” Aidan Gallagher plays Number Five, a 58-year-old assassin and theoretical physicist trapped in a 13-year-old’s body.
A Word Please

1 month ago | theworldlink.com | June Casagrande

A lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.” All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote. Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life.
A Word Please

1 month ago | theworldlink.com | June Casagrande

“It makes me mad when people say ‘literally’ when they mean ‘figuratively’ as it does sound stupid and confusing,” a poster on Quora wrote recently. “Is this normal?” In the replies, the top answer is from a self-identified bot called Assistant: “Yes, it’s completely normal to feel frustrated when people misuse words, especially a word like ‘literally,’ which has a specific meaning.
A Word Please: Do you say 'car-a-mel' or 'car-mel'? Turns out, they're both right

2 months ago | latimes.com | June Casagrande

Several three-syllable words are pronounced as having two syllables, June Casagrande explains. For example, she just learned the pronunciation “carmel” with two syllables is every bit as acceptable as the three-syllable pronunciation of “caramel.”People think that, because I write about grammar, I must have grown up in one of those we-value-education families, probably in a good school district. Nope.
'A Word, Please'

2 months ago | newportnewstimes.com | June Casagrande

By June CasagrandeA lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide, “The Careful Writer.” All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote. Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life.
'A Word, Please'

2 months ago | thenewsguard.com | June Casagrande

By June CasagrandeA lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide, “The Careful Writer.” All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote. Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life.