Captain Grammar Pants

Captain Grammar Pants Correcting errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and more to help others...but mainly for the joy of it all.

08/25/2026

VERSUS (Latin, “against” and “turned”) is a preposition, and it means “in opposition to.” I think we all understand it when we hear it spoken. Its secondary meanings include “compared with,” and it also plays a role in words such as invert (Latin, “turn inside out”), revert (Latin, “turn back”), and subvert (Latin, “turn from below”). It is frequently misspelled as VERSES (Latin, same etymology), and therein lies the problem: as a noun, verse really does mean “a line of writing.” VERSE (as a verb) has also become a common back-formation of versus used in games and sports. It’s too late to reverse course on “verse” as a verb, but please use versus to mean “against” and verses for writing.

08/24/2026

A very gracious grammar guardian/biologist has finally given me a reason to celebrate the word NUCULAR. A NUCULE is one half of a single-seed fruit (mere mortals tend to call that big seed a “pit”) that you find when you pull apart a peach, cherry, or other stone fruit of that kind. You can manage to use the term “nucular” if you somehow create a sentence that refers to the broken-apart fruit. Hmm. “The peach was known for its dangerous nucular bits”? I’m just not seeing the opportunity. Be aware, however, that if you use the word nucular in place of the very different word NUCLEAR, some of us will crinkle our foreheads in alarm! Please use “nucular” ONLY if you are discussing a particular type of fruit.

08/23/2026

Today we sort through the complications presented by multiple spellings of "yes" (and its variants). First, YEA (Old English, "yes") means both "yes" and "hooray," but also can be used to emphasize. For example, the essay was littered, yea, packed with errors. It can also mean yes, as in voting yea or nay. YAY is informal, as in "you were only yay tall ten years ago." It also means "hooray" in a casual way, especially in many FB posts (including my own); the expression of joy originally belonged to "yea." YEAH is the informal representation of how many English speakers pronounce "yes." Yes?

People who express dismay over the existence and importance of semicolons may not realize how helpful they can be in exp...
08/22/2026

People who express dismay over the existence and importance of semicolons may not realize how helpful they can be in expressing ideas. (Hat tip to Doug Barr!)

08/22/2026

Are you INTERESTED, DISINTERESTED, or UNINTERESTED? Interest (Latin, “be important”) is an adjective, a noun, and a verb. Pay interest to an interested party, and you just might interest someone in your own interests. Those are fairly clear. If you are disinterested, however, you are considered impartial or fair; you treat things equally. This meaning is radically different from uninterested, which means that you are indifferent; you couldn’t care less. Of course, if grammar (or punctuation, spelling, word usage and other writing issues) doesn’t interest you, many adorable kitten videos are out there, just waiting for your interest!

08/21/2026

RODENTS (Latin, “gnawing”) are characterized by having strong front incisors and no canine teeth. The meaning of their names in English is entertaining, while the fact that their incisors never stop growing is worrisome to this human. Look at these meanings! The squirrel (Greek, “shadow tail”), capybara (Tupi, “grass eater”), beaver (Old High German, “brown”), marmot (Latin, “mountain mouse”), hamster (Old High German, “weevil”), porcupine (Latin, “thorn pig”), and rat (Old French, “rat”) all belong in this category. The mouse (Latin, “mouse”) has made its way into computer language in ways that—alas!—the others never will.

08/20/2026

If you would like to specify the s*x of a professional worker, as in a doctor, lawyer, or teacher, just don't; please just use the word doctor, lawyer, or teacher. There is no need to use the word woman or man (or male or female). Speaking as a college professor, all too often I hear myself described as a “woman professor.” A “woman professor” is in the same category as a science professor or a music professor. Is that really what you mean? Do I teach “woman”? Would you say, “He is a man professor”? Chances are excellent that you would say, “He is a professor,” because that is your focus: his profession, not his s*x. Also, please remember that s*x is biology (as in “determining the s*x of a fruit fly”), and gender is a social construct (as in “many rivers in Europe are gendered as female”).

08/18/2026

You may never have heard of an APPOSITIVE (Latin, “subsidiary”), but it is a modifying word or phrase that clarifies a noun or pronoun. The following sentence begins with an appositive: A stickler for grammar, Captain Grammar Pants suffers when she sees all the errors on social media. In contrast, the following sentence includes an appositive after the subject: Captain Grammar Pants, a stickler for grammar, suffers when she sees all the errors on social media. The appositive serves a purpose by moving a subject from the general (a stickler for grammar) to the specific (CGP), regardless of its position in the sentence, or the suffering of the social media reader.

08/17/2026

The proliferation of coffee shops prompts me to clarify a few things about Italian pronunciation. First, a latte (“LAH-teh”) should sport neither whipped cream nor an accent mark. Using an accent at the end of latte would assume a pronunciation of “lah-TAY,” and that should never happen. Second, both cch and cc (before o, u, or a) are pronounced k, as in macchiato and cioccolata, whereas cc before i and e is pronounced “ch,” as in cappuccino. Third, if you call it expresso instead of espresso, I will raise an eyebrow at you! Lastly, the consonant cluster “sch” is a sk sound in Italian, not a “sh” sound, so maraschino and bruschetta are “mara-SKEE-no” and “brus-KET-ta.” Grazie!

08/16/2026

The word PORCELAIN (Italian, “cowrie shell”) has an illustrious history that dates to Marco Polo’s journey at the end of the 13th century. He noticed that the brilliant sheen of East Asian ceramics was just as luminous and beautiful as a cowrie shell. But the Italian word for “cowrie” (porcellana) was also the street slang for v***a. The symbolic linkage of cowrie shells with fertility and the divine feminine has everything to do with both the shape underneath the shell and their luminosity. That porcelain—as named by Marco Polo—recalls a female body part is less of a surprise than the idea that porcelain retains its feminine qualities.

Address

Olympia, WA
98505

Telephone

+13608676623

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Captain Grammar Pants posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category