Happy Monday, and welcome to the next installment of Say What?, in which we discover the origins of (Don’t) upset the applecart and The apple never falls far from the tree. With examples from ( Supernatural )

In August of last year, Slate writer Katy Waldman tackled the tricky issue of adjective order and whether it’s important in spoken and written English. Her article describes GSSSACPM, which is the generally agreed-upon order of adjectives describing a particular noun: “general opinion then specific opinion then size then shape then age then color then provenance then material” (bold emphasis mine). But of course it’s not quite as simple as all that, as Waldman goes on to explain. I’ll admit that some of her explanation seemed needlessly convoluted to me, but her examples helped to clear up what she meant, which I appreciated. So overall, I liked this article. I even learned several new things, which is something I always enjoy doing. ( Read on to get the full scoop. )

Welcome! An anonymous grammar fan asked us, "What are gerunds? How do they differ from regular verbs?" Today, we've got the answer, along with a little help from our friends from ( Saiyuki. )

xkcd shows us why the language nerds shall rule the Earth: it's gotta be those mad linguistic skills!



Hovertext: Not to go all sentence fragment on you.


To become an Earth-ruling language nerd yourself, pop over to our "parts of speech" tags, peruse our "Grammar 101" tag, or have a peek at a couple of articles from About.com and NYTimes.com to read up on verbing nouns, adverbing adjectives, nouning verbs, and adjectiving nouns, etc.

Welcome back to "Say What?" Today we're tackling the sayings a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and a house divided against itself cannot stand, both of which deal with the strength (or lack thereof) in a given item.

( Let's find out more, with a little help from the characters of Pacific Rim. )

Happy Monday, fellow grammar lovers, and welcome to another round of "Blast from the Past"! Today we'll revisit the tricky awhile and a while, whose subtle differences were first covered by the most splendid green_grrl over here.

( With examples from Supernatural )

Happy Friday, grammar lovers, and welcome back to "Say What?"

Today we'll be looking at two very familiar sayings, discretion is the better part of valor and when in Rome, do as the Romans do, both of which deal with prudence (and, in the latter's case, also a bit of politeness). So without further ado, let's have at it! ( With examples from Supernatural. )