Linguists are often accused of ignoring the difference between good writing and bad. But I’m not one of E. B. White’s The sentence is not of recent vintage, as you may have guessed. It’s 135 years old ...

Now don’t get scared. We won't start drilling you on “who” vs. “whom,” conjugations, and gerunds. You can relax. We’ll take a much more practical approach, and we won’t use any strange words. Promise.