The couple is going to purchase the house? Or the couple are going to purchase the house? Even after all my years of editing, I can still get tripped up trying to make verbs agree with collective ...

What is happening to the English language? I learned the difference between singular and plural nouns while in elementary school. That was reinforced during middle school, high school and college. It ...

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about English grammar and usage — most of which I promptly forgot. And not for lack of use. Every day I apply what I’ve learned to catch and fix writers’ mistakes.

For more than a millennium after the fall of Rome, educated Europeans were distinguished by their knowledge of Latin. One of the three subjects of the trivium—the basic tier of a classical education, ...

Is ‘majority’ singular or plural? The word “majority” can be either singular or plural, depending on whether we are talking about a group or collection of individuals or the individuals in a group. If ...

What do erotica, stamina, and candelabra have in common? Oh, stop it. The answer is that they are all singular nouns that started off plural. In Latin, nouns that end in –um when alone often end in –a ...

Some keen-eared Radio National listeners recently took issue with the following sentence, delivered on a book review program: "There's heartbreaking scenes in Murakami's new novel." It's not that the ...