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When to Use “That,” “Which,” and “Who” The proper use of the relative pronouns  who ,  that , and  which  relate the subject of a sentence to its object, hence the name. The question of which of the three words to use in a given context vexes some writers; here’s an explanation of their relative roles. Who, Whom, and Whose Who  and  whom  refer only to people, and  whose  almost always does so: “I have a friend who can help.” “Whom you associate with is your concern.” “The person whose jacket was left behind is the likely culprit.” ( Whose  is sometimes used to refer to an object, as in “Notice the car whose headlights are off.” This awkward usage should be replaced by, for example, “Notice the car that has its headlights off” or, better, “Notice the car with its headlights off.”) That That  refers mostly to things, though a class or type of person is also sometimes referred to by this pronoun: “He has the key that...

5 Funny Figures of Speech Wordplay is a fertile field for study in English. Although the following forms of humor should be used sparingly if at all, writers should be familiar with them and their possibilities. 1. Malapropism A malapropism, the substitution of a word with a similar-sounding but incongruous word, may be uttered accidentally or, for humorous effect, may be deliberate. The name derives from that of Mrs. Malaprop, a character in an eighteenth-century play who often uttered such misstatements; one of her comments, for example, is “she’s as headstrong as an  allegory ,” when she meant to say “alligator.” (The word ultimately derives from the French phrase  mal à propos , meaning “poorly placed.”) Numerous characters are assigned this amusing attribute; the Shakespearean character Dogberry’s name inspired an alternate label. 2. Spoonerism Spoonerisms are similar to malapropisms; the distinction is that a spoonerism is a case of metathesis, in which parts o...

BUILD YOUR VOCABULARY - Shradha Kaul Did you know that words could be a source of enjoyment? There a number of interesting ways one could increase one’s word power. Once you get into the loop of reading, you tend to veer towards an exploration into this world of words. People have always wondered why the plural of foot is feet, goose is geese but then why is moose not meese ? There are a number of such anomalies that exist in the world of English language, we will not of course try and unravel this unfathomable mystery but go on to understand how we could learn as much as possible. Through the course of my relation building with the language, I discovered many things and would like to share some of them. Before I go on, I would like to reiterate that ‘words symbolize knowledge’. An erudite person stands out because of his/ her vocabulary. Learned people possess some of the most remarkable vocabularies. While reading books by great people, I have felt the energy of vo...

“Expedient” vs. “Expeditious” What’s the difference between  expedient  and  expeditious ? The words were originally synonymous, but their meanings diverged long ago, and the distinction is small but significant. Both words derive from the Latin term  expedire , which means “disengage” or “prepare.” (The literal meaning is “free the feet.”) As you may have guessed, that’s also the source of  expedition , in the original sense of “journey” and the associated meaning of “those on a journey.” (The adjective form is  expeditionary .) From  expedire  came the word  expedite , meaning “dispatch or issue,” “do promptly,” or “speed up.” ( Expediate  is an unnecessary variant.) Two adjectives developed from this term:  Expeditious  originally meant “fitting” or “useful,” but it later acquired the sense of “promptly efficient” and lost its original meaning, which  expedient  retains. Expedient  has two connotat...

Schadenfreude Alert! Inside a Collection of  Wretched Writing "You got further plucking the chicken in front of you than trying to start on one up a tree. Especially when the tree was in another country, and there might not even be another chicken" By  Katy Steinmetz   Ross and Kathy Petras spend their days neck-deep in unfortunate words. The brother-sister team behind a new collection of “crimes against the English language”–called  Wretched Writing  (Perigree; 224 pages) – have also compiled very bad poetry and countless anthologies of “stupidest” quotations. If you’re in need of a new back-of-the-toilet book, their latest pièce de putridity just might be for you. NewsFeed spoke to the authors about how they decided what was truly wretched, where they managed to dig it up and why readers should endure the woeful work, too. Filed under:  celebrity poets “I draw a hot sorrow bath in my despair room.” - Keanu Reeves,  Ode to Happine...

The Secrets of How to Write Short "America's writing coach" explains how to artfully write a tweet, epitaph or ransom note By  Katy Steinmetz     Roy Peter Clark is so meta. The senior scholar at the Poynter Institute has written or edited over a dozen books on writing, handing out pointers to pre-teens and Pulitzer Prize winners along the way. In his latest offering,  How to Write Short :  Word Craft for Fast Times   , Clark surveys all forms of short writing, from tweets and Facebook posts to ransom notes, prayers, baseball cards, sonnets, lyrics and fortunes in fortune cookies. (His favorite: “Ignore previous cookie.”) TIME spoke to Clark about his stylistic tips, how language is changing and what we can learn from  Macbeth . First things first, what is writing short? For the book, it’s 300 words or fewer. That often constitutes “fair use” and 300 words is about the number of words that appear on a single, type-written page. But ...

C'est la vie  by Shradha Kaul The English language is a treat.  It has so many variations, it is very deep-rooted, it has taken over the world and best of all it has accommodated many foreign languages in some form or the other.  It has used the best from many languages and at the same time retained its distinctiveness. This is one of the main reasons for its acceptance the world over. So, a foreign phrase or word interspersed in the language doesn’t come as a surprise, it only adds to its holistic nature. This trait had led to the accumulation of a vast vocabulary too. According to sources, “the English language is closing in on the one million word mark.” Many of us almost get taken aback by the very Indian or Hindi sounding word which we come across in English. Some very popular examples are pyjamas, curry, pundit, mantra, avatar…of course the list is endless. Likewise, you will find many foreign phrases which are found not only in the written word but are ...