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 ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Leave it to a scientist to finally explain how to kill off bad writing. In his new ...

An "infinitive" in English is a verb preceded by the word to, as in to study. Many English verbs can be followed by a grammatical structure that contains an infinitive and is known as an "infinitive ...

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 ...

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 ...

LAST week, in answer to a question from English teacher Farhad H., in Iran, I started laying out the basis for why the full infinitive “to take” is the correct answer choice in this test statement: ...