Sat, 10 Jan 2026 12:17:45 EST
Consider This Sentence
The following sentence appears in The Globe and Mail on Apple News. “Ontario’s top court on Friday ordered an independent psychiatric assessment of a 43-year-old man who has spent half his life detained in isolated seclusion at a mental-health care centre north of Toronto.”
I prefer sentence modifiers at the beginning of sentences (On Friday).
I like to name institutions and people on first mention. This sentence curiously speaks of two anonymous institutions and one anonymous man.
The phrase half his life is meant convey a sense of the extraordinary. In journalism, it is better to convey a fact than a feeling.
The phrase detained in isolated seclusion is redundant.
My rewrite; “On Friday, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered an independent psychiatric assessment of Camelot Hamblett, a 43-year-old man who has spent the last 20 years in isolation at the Waypoint Centre north of Toronto.”
Tue, 06 Jan 2026 14:43:36 EST
Earth: Capitalize or Do Not Capitalize?
When you name planet Earth with a proper noun, capitalize it: You live here on Earth. Earth is warming. We do not use the definite article before a proper noun.
When you introduce earth with the definite article, do not capitalize earth in the noun phrase: The earth spins on its axis. He is the scum of the earth.
When you talk about dirt, do not capitalize the noun: He scooped up some earth from the field.
Sun, 04 Jan 2026 21:52:45 EST
Sneeze
In the late 15th century, the verb to sneeze appears in Middle English as the verb snesen. Before then, the verb was nesen. Before the verb was nesen, it was fnesen. Before the verb was fnesen, it was fnēosan. Fnēosan is Anglo-Saxon and means to sneeze or to snort. Fnēosan ultimately derives from the proto-Indo-European root pneu, which means to breathe.
Some believe that the alteration from fnesen to snesen was caused by a misreading of the f as an archaic long s. Others dispute this conclusion because of the existence of the intermediate form nesen.
Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:30:09 EST
Dog
The noun dog first appears in Anglo-Saxon as docge, which meant a particularly powerful dog, perhaps of a specific breed. The etymology of dog before the Anglo-Saxon period is unknown.
The generic Anglo-Saxon term for dog was hund. Hund evolved into the modern hound, which now specifically names hunting dogs.
Docge (dock-ye) became dogge (dog-ye) in Middle English and had a derogatory connotation (bad dog? nasty dog?). Dogge evolved into the modern generic term dog.