One of the most fascinating things about language is that we can use it so well, so expertly, without understanding how we do it. The following two sentences are perfect examples. If the burglar was ...

After a full-dress review of the subjunctive in the preceding chapters, this form of the English language should no longer hold any terrors for us. With a clearer understanding of its uses and ...

READING a story on the fate of European newspapers, your columnist was drowning in bad news—newsrooms decimated, advertisers fleeing—but then a strange sentence appeared: Even Rupert Murdoch, who ...

Sometimes, what might have been never stops mattering. By Jean Chen Ho I’ve always had an unstable relationship to time. Maybe that’s because in Chinese, my first language, verbs aren’t conjugated.

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

“If there were a Form 3, you would have already filled it out.” Reader Jessica had a question about a sentence like this. The speaker already knew about a Form 1 and a Form 2. The existence of Form 3, ...

Phuc Tran grew up caught between two languages with opposing cultural perspectives: the indicative reality of Vietnamese and the power to image endless possibilities with English. In this personal ...

It is often bemoaned in Britain that English is going to pieces—and Americans are generally to blame. Whether you call it decline or not, the moaners are on to something: America has indeed produced ...