Not long ago, I used as an example in this column "Having already missed two mortgage payments, Jane asked her mother if she could loan her some money." I was making the point that editors usually ...

This paper presents a lexical choice component for complex noun phrases. We first explain why lexical choice for NPs deserves special attention within the standard pipeline architecture for a ...

Not long ago, I used as an example in this column “Having already missed two mortgage payments, Jane asked her mother if she could loan her some money.” I was making the point that editors usually ...

Russ in New Jersey had a question about hyphens: In “northwestern California landmark” should “northwestern California” be hyphenated? “I’m not sure if it’s simply a matter of preference or if the ...

TO better appreciate the value of free modifiers, particularly of the kind that works in the same league as resumptive modifiers and summative modifiers, we must first survey the entire universe of ...

MODIFIERS give us information about a noun or pronoun in a sentence. They are important because they help to paint the true picture of the information we seek to convey to our reader or listener. The ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. The “rules” under which hyphens are used to connect multiple modifiers, like “well(-)known man,” are varied and ...