DEAR RICHARD: Now retired from 50 years of college teaching and having no more student papers to grade and critique, I address your recent U-T column. I so enjoy, appreciate, and support your language ...

Reader Don in Los Angeles County wrote recently with a question about a well-known grammar issue called a “split infinitive.” “I learned about them 50 years ago and I am somewhat sensitive about them ...

Today we're gonna talk about split infinitives. First of all, what is an infinitive? It's a form of the verb that has to in front of it. And it doesn't indicate anything about tense or about person or ...

Not long ago while editing a series of articles, I noticed that the writer had strange ideas about where to put adverbs. Many were placed before the verbs and some before the subjects too. “He ...

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW was once so angry with a subeditor that he complained to the newspaper. “I ask you, sir,” Shaw wrote, “to put this man out.” The cause of his fury? The editor had insisted on ...

You’ve probably heard the old story about the pedant who dared to tinker with Winston Churchill’s writing because the great man had ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s scribbled response: ...

We can all probably recite at least part of Star Trek's iconic mission statement, as dictated by William Shatner in the series' opening credits. Every week, fans were told that the Enterprise's ...