Fandom Grammar

Both of our sayings today are British in origin. Luckily, Blair from The Sentinel is an anthropologist and has travelled widely, so he can give us some help.( Read more... )

This is a perfect example of how a phrase or sentence can have two completely opposite meanings. Let's call on our Sentinel friends for a little help.( Read more... )

Not many people have travelled really extensively, so when it comes to writing a story set in a specific area, especially in a country foreign to you, it's almost certain you've never visited it. Let's get a bit of help from our Sentinel friends.( Read more... )

The apostrophe (') may be the simplest and yet most frequently misused mark of punctuation in English. It was introduced into English in the 16th century from Latin and Greek, in which it served to mark the loss of letters.
And as editor Tom McArthur notes in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, "There was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear-cut and known, understood, and followed by most educated people." ( Read more... )

These two verbs - as well as immigration and emigration, immigrant and emigrant, the nouns formed from the verbs - are opposite sides of the same coin. Let's see if our friends in The Sentinel can help explain the difference. ( Read more... )

There's a big difference in meaning between gesture and jester. Let's try to understand what it is with a little help from our friends in The Sentinel.( Read more... ).

Sources
The Free Dictionary gesture
The Free Dictionary jester
Wikipedia jester
The Free Dictionary clown

No two words that sound vaguely alike could be more different in their meanings than railing and reeling. With a little help from our friends in The Sentinel... ( Read more... )

Sources
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Railing
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/reel?q=reel

At first sight, you might think that these are all variant spellings of the same word, but they're not. With a little help from our friends in Star Trek... ( Read more... )

Spell it Out by David Crystal (Profile Books)
www.TheFreeDictionary.com

Where the word 'data' is concerned - you pay your money and you make your choice; with a little help from our friends in The Sentinel. ( Read more... )

Answer: Which is correct and why? "none of them are" vs "none of them is" and "neither is" vs "neither are"

Both of these provide a problem because in neither case is it immediately clear whether the subject is singular or plural. With a little help from our friends in Star Trek - ( Read more... )