Daily Writing Tips » Style

A reader asks about the sentence: “Vikings razed many monasteries to the ground.” Is not “to the ground” in this statement superfluous? Where else could it be razed to? The question puts ...

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/does-raze-need-to-the-ground/

A reader has asked for a discussion of the difference between the words apparently and presumably. A meaning for presumably is easy to pin down. The OED gives one current definition: presumably: ...

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/apparently-and-presumably/

Seven years ago, I wrote a post called “The Ubiquitous Butt.” In it, I admitted my own distaste for the word, but acknowledged that butt had by then won a place in general usage: The word but...

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/butt-redux/

A reader poses a question about a usage that occurs in one of my posts from 2009. Calvin Coolidge was in Vermont when President Harding died in California. Coolidge’s father, a notary public, a...

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/should-next-day-be-preceded-by-the/

English has such a rich vocabulary, writers have little excuse to use a word that is almost right. As Twain famously put it, The difference between the almost right word and the right word is rea...

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/endearing-and-ravished/