Mignon Fogarty

1 month ago | quickanddirtytips.com | Mignon Fogarty

One of my favorite parts of the Grammarpalooza bonus interviews that supporters get is the guests’  book recommendations. Ghostwriting expert Dan Gerstein provided us with three particularly good recommendations that unfortunately, didn’t make it into the podcast — a rare event that I’ve tried to rectify by posting them here.

Jan 7, 2025 | quickanddirtytips.com | Mignon Fogarty

There’s been a grammar controversy bubbling up from the new movie “Wicked,” which is an adaptation of the Broadway musical “Wicked,” which was loosely based on the 1995 novel “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, which was inspired by the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” which was based on the 1900 novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. That’s a lot of media properties!Is ‘The Wizard and I’ grammatically correct?

Jul 9, 2024 | quickanddirtytips.com | Mignon Fogarty

Have you heard about the required order of adjectives in English? A few years ago, a paragraph from Mark Forsyth’s book “The Elements of Eloquence” that described this regular order of adjectives went viral on Twitter. The concept pops up again every year or so and blows people’s minds anew. He said, “You can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.

Jun 25, 2024 | quickanddirtytips.com | Mignon Fogarty

To understand the difference between “which” and “that,” first you need to understand the difference between a restrictive element and a non-restrictive element, because the simple rule is to use “that” with a restrictive element and “which” with a non-restrictive element. Restrictive Clauses and Nonrestrictive ClausesA restrictive element is just part of a sentence you can’t get rid of because it specifically restricts the noun.

Jun 18, 2024 | quickanddirtytips.com | Mignon Fogarty

Today I’ll explain the difference between dashes, commas, and parentheses. Have you ever been sitting at your computer writing, and suddenly you aren’t sure whether you should use parentheses, commas, or dashes to set off some extra point or an aside? It happens to me because in a lot of cases these marks are interchangeable, at least grammatically. But they each do give your writing a different feeling.