Last week we talked about participles, which are verbs that work like adjectives. Gerunds are also based on verbs, but they work like nouns. Gerunds have only one form, and it looks exactly like the ...

Oh, dear. It had to happen sooner or later: a direct clash with Chronicle editorial authority over a point of 19th-century prescriptive grammar. My Our esteemed editor, Heidi Landecker, who has saved ...

The three little letters “ing” strike fear into me because I have been unable to find a simple way to explain this concept. If you take the verb “to cook” and add an “ing,” it can be a gerund. A ...

A gerund is a verbal form that looks like a participle but functions as a noun. For example: "Drinking gin on an empty stomach is really stupid." Ordinarily, gerunds are as tame as gerbils, but when ...

A few weeks ago, I mentioned here a CNN article “about the president making an unannounced stop.” Two readers emailed with the same question. Here’s Bill in Niskayuna, N.Y.: “I was taught that a noun ...

Gerunds are the -ing form of a verb, and infinitives are the to + base form. These words can be confusing; they combine the meaning of a verb with the grammar of a noun. My father asked me to phone ...

The dictionary definition of a participle is; ‘a verb ending in –‘ing’ (present) or –‘ed’, -‘en’, -d, -t, -n, or -ne (past) that functions as an adjective, modifying a noun or pronoun. A participial ...

When people ask me who put the “sin in cinema,” I respond, “Kenneth Marcus of Englewood Heights, N.J.” Into their dropped jaws I explain that during the early days of American movies — when Englewood ...

Is the following statement grammatically correct? “Please wear your proper uniform. Wearing of shorts, sandos, and slippers are strictly prohibited.” That question was posted recently in Jose ...