Status Updates From Grammar Girl's 101 Misused ...

I started using their or they even with singular pronouns to be politically correct years ago when I was unsure of someone's gender (actually, even an animal's gender ~ I was surprised to find out how easily dog owners at parks are offended if you misgender their dogs). It's nice to know they or their is grammatically correct for singular pronouns as well.

Stationery is paper - think e, e-mail, written communication

Stationary is standing still

I think I've misspelled this one quite a bit, simply using 'stationary' for everything.

Later I'll go back to 'me, my, and gerunds.' This is one of those word choices where I typically avoid it all together because I'm fuzzy on the rules.

lend vs loan

In Britain, loan is the noun and lend is the verb. It's interchangeable in the U.S. If you want to sound impressive stick to using lend as the verb.

My high school English teacher her students a great tip for going off to college. That if we used British English grammar while writing essays it would impress the professors. I found this was in general true.

lightning - bolt of light from the sky

lightening - to lighten something

Some of these are simply intuitive. I've always spelled each one of these correctly in the proper context, but I never paid much attention to it? This is why I think this book would be good for someone learning English as a second language. I can't imagine trying to learn these subtle differences, as an adult, especially.

Like principle vs principal

I learned the difference when I was little. I always remember the definition of each word, but I was so embarrassed months ago when I was texting a person I was doing business with and misused the word in a text. The misuse still haunts me to this day.

"Hens lie down to lay eggs."

The hen is the subject, lie is the subject verb.

Eggs are the object, lay is the object verb.

This is actually a pretty simple way to remember it. To give the author credit, she does include good, easy to remember tips.

It's these really simple ones that are the most embarrassing to get wrong, and when I can't remember I end up just never using the word.