Macmillan Holdings, LLC. Grammar Girl, Grammar Girl's, QDnow, and Quick and Dirty Tips are all trademarks of Macmillan Holdings, LLC. I get a lot of questions about things that are too short to make up a whole podcast, so today I'm going to answer a few of those short questions. Ashley B grammar FYI in "try to" 'to' is NOT a preposition! It is the infinitival form of the verb that should occur after it... ie- try to run vs try running. to+v can be substituted by a gerund form. To in this instance is NOT a preposition. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=17966#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=17966#Comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:37:00 GMT denise lieuw fat grammar you may give more qiuzes and have a topic on reported speech. because for foreigners it is sometimes very difficult to link both sentences, direct and indirect speech. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=16133#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=16133#Comments Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:52:51 GMT Gwen grammar So many times I hear people say they feel badly about a situation but they never say they feel goodly when things go right. Isn't it correct to say "I feel bad"? http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=13259#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=13259#Comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:31:19 GMT Barbara grammar Where did the phrase "How fun!" come from?? It is so wrong. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=13222#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=13222#Comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:38:25 GMT Elizabeth grammar The Big Bang Theory writers must be tuning in to Grammar Girl: there was a Nauseous versus Nauseated bit on Monday's episode. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=12684#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=12684#Comments Sat, 24 May 2008 03:21:20 GMT Monica grammar I want to ask about dropping “to be” from sentences such as “The dishes need washed” instead of “The dishes need to be washed.” Is there a rule for this? I am developing a Grammar Guide for work and one of the questions my readers have falls under the omission of “to be” from sentences. Other than a dialect/regionalism “thing” is there a rule that states this is wrong? I want to be able to explain to them why “to be” needs “to be” in the sentence. Or, is the only answer, "Because it sounds right?" Thanks! http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=12636#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=12636#Comments Tue, 20 May 2008 03:26:45 GMT Frank grammar When listing hours of operation, should EST and/or EDT follow? Can I simply list the times as Eastern? This example involves an internal product support group that serves offices throughout the US and Canada. Thank you http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=12541#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=12541#Comments Wed, 07 May 2008 15:42:51 GMT Albert grammar In a moment of madness GG typed: Grammar Girl Says: 11/25/2007 2:23:10 AM Jas, "my" is a possessive pronoun. And nobody has corrected it! "my" is, of course, a possessive ADJECTIVE. The corresponding pronoun is "mine". The other possessive pronouns are "yours", "his", "hers", "ours" and "theirs". You will see that "his" can be a pronoun - This book is his - or an adjective - This is his book. Nikki said, on a different thread, that in Jane Austen's time, hers, yours and theirs used to be written with apostrophes. I don't know if that is true. But maybe the rules had not been written then. You've got to have rules. If you didn't have rules, where would you be? - France! If you had too many rules, where would you be? - Germany! "its" is almost always a possessive adjective. It is possible to construct a sentence making "its" a possessive pronoun, but it would sound false. For example, "This bowl is mine, the other one is its [referring to my dog]." But you would never say that. You would say "This bowl is mine, the other one is the dog's." http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=11778#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=11778#Comments Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:12:08 GMT Assistant to Grammar Girl grammar "The Office" episode title is "Money" and it's from season 4. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/2fd7fd, you can watch the entire episode. The clip is about 21 minutes into the show. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=11467#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=11467#Comments Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT Grammar Girl grammar The clip from "The Office" has been removed from YouTube, but there are full episodes of "The Office" on the NBC website. If someone can tell me what episode the "whoever" versus "whomever" fight is from, I'll put a link up to it. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=11453#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx?commentid=11453#Comments Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:36:23 GMT Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:37:00 GMT http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Managing Editor) feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Webmaster) en-us