Grammar Underground with June Casagrande

"The walking of the dog is an activity that Naomi enjoys." What's wrong with this sentence? Grammatically, nothing. Yet ... Read more

Direct objects receive the action of a verb, so to speak. The direct object is the thing or being navigated in Joe navig... Read more

  The differences between historic and historical are subtle. If you have a vague, unarticulated sense of how best to us... Read more

  Have you ever heard someone say a sentence is in the subjunctive mood or the first person or the passive voice? These ... Read more

  There are rules for writing people's titles, especially when it comes to capitalization. Here's what you need to know.

We think of adverbs as basically adjectives with "ly" tacked on the end. But of course, that's an oversimplification. Th... Read more

  When is a noun not a noun? When it's acting like an adjective like "chicken" in "chicken soup" and "air" in "air trave... Read more

Indefinite pronouns — words like anyone and all and everything and many — have some unique properties and deserve a clos... Read more

When is into one word and when is it two? Here's a hint: When a preposition is integral to the noun's meaning, as in giv... Read more

If your company has customer-friendly policies, would you say those policies are customer friendly or customer-friendly?... Read more

  There are a lot of ways your sentences can go wrong. Here are some major structural problems to look out for.

  If you don't know what an appositive is, you should. An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that sits right next to an... Read more

The rules for hyphenating prefixes are different from the rules for hyphenating compound modifiers and nouns. There are ... Read more

  Style guides and grammar books have helpful rules for hyphenating compound adjectives. But the guides are mum on compo... Read more

  A hyphen is a short mark that connects words, as in a "good-looking car." An em dash, which most people think of as a ... Read more

If you hear something like, "The town was brought literally to its knees," it's okay to snicker. But don't get too judgm... Read more

Everyone understands comma basics. Commas are separators, weaker than periods. And they work within a single sentence. B... Read more

If you pay attention to grammar, you already know that apostrophes cause some of the worst and most common mistakes. But... Read more

  It's not enough to know how to quote someone. You have to know when to quote them. Here's a quick lesson on all things... Read more

Have you ever wondered about the difference between "if" and "whether"? Good news: grammatically, there's no line in the... Read more