Recently, I mentioned in a column that adverbs aren’t just those “ly” words that modify verbs. They’re a much larger group, including words that answer the questions “when,” “where” and “in what ...

“I don’t stay up nights worrying,” said John Lennon in 1965. “Summers I used to cover Missouri,” wrote Thornton Wilder in 1934. “I went over there afternoons,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in 1929. Why do ...

Baltimore Sun copy editor extraordinaire John McIntyre uses the term “dog-whistle editing” to refer to tiny editing issues that only copy editors notice (and perhaps only copy editors care about).

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. ‘Farmer Frank drives carefully.’ ‘Carefully’ is an adverb describing ‘drives’. It tells us how Farmer Frank drives. Most adverbs end ...

This quintessentially polite request was made by Forum member Na30r some years back: “If you don’t mind please explain the ‘reducing of adverb clauses.’” (When someone makes a request in such nuanced ...