Good vs. Well–How Should I Use Them?

A common English error is to misuse the words good and well. The rule of thumb is that good is an adjective and well is an adverb. Good modifies a noun; something can be or seem good. Well modifies a verb; an action can be done well. However, when you’re talking about health, well can be used as an adjective.

All you need to remember when you are pondering whether good or well is best for your sentence is that good modifies a person, place, or thing, whereas well modifies an action. If you’re having a good day, then your day is going well.

Did you do good on your exams?

Did you do well on your exams?

I can’t believe it! I did good on the test.

I can’t believe it! I did well on the test.

Here, we have a clear action verb: to do. Do should be modified with well, not good.

This is well lasagna!

This is good lasagna!

Lasagna is a noun—a thing—that should be modified with good. Nonaction verbs, like to be, to look, to seem, and to feel can also take good, the adjectival form.

Today, at last, life is good .

An Exception to the Well/Good Rule: Health and Wellbeing

When we refer to a person’s health or wellbeing, well is customarily used as an adjective.

She asked about David’s illness, and I told her he is good now.

She asked about David’s illness, and I told her he is well now.

When you tell someone “Be good!” you are talking about the behavior of that person. However, to say, “Be well!” is to express a wish for their good health.

3 Charles Dickens Characters You Don’t Want to Meet

The great English writer Charles Dickens is known for his well-crafted characters. While some of the characters we meet in Dickens’ novels are endearing heroes, others are sinister villains. Here are three Dickens characters you would never want to meet.

Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist A career criminal, violent abuser, and murderer, Bill Sikes is at the top of the list of characters to avoid. This is how Dickens describes him: “…a stoutly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which enclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves—the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three weeks’ growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.”

Daniel Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop Daniel Quilp is a sneaky manipulator who uses secrets as currency. A condescending liar, Quilp can’t be trusted. If you met him on the street, it would be wise to keep your head down and walk the other way.

Miss Havisham in Great Expectations Although her cruelty stems from the deep pain of betrayal and rejection, Miss Havisham is cruel nonetheless. She meddles in both Pip and Estella’s lives, encouraging love in one and brutal indifference in the other. Miss Havisham succeeds in hurting everyone close to her and ruins the lives of others as a consequence. She’s destructive, manipulative, and cruel. Watch out!

Which Dickens character is your favorite villain? Let us know in the comments!

Are You a Word Nerd?

Grammar is cool now (it’s still cool, right?) so it’s okay to wave your red pen in the air like you just don’t care. Take the quiz below and find out just how much of a word nerd you really are. Give yourself a point for each statement you agree with.

• You correct the lyrics to pop songs as you sing along. It’s the “one who got away,” Katy Perry.
• The “ten items or less” sign at the grocery store still sends you into a rage after all these years.
• You have a favorite style guide and will defend it to the death.
• You’ve written “stet” in the margins of a paper at least once.
• You know when to hyphenate a compound modifier.
• You’ve lost at least one friend over the use of the Oxford comma.
• You have a favorite punctuation mark.
• You have a favorite font.
• The misuse of “decimate” or “enormity” makes you disproportionately mad.
• You’ve traded your proofreading services for beer and/or pizza.
• You text in complete, grammatically correct sentences.
• You have a print copy of a dictionary. (Give yourself a bonus point if it’s the Oxford English Dictionary.)
• It doesn’t matter how many people use it wrong; you’ll never say “literally” when you really mean “figuratively.”
• You know when to use “i.e.” and when to use “e.g.” in a sentence.
• Grammar on Twitter gives you hives.
• You were really excited when Facebook started letting you correct your posts.
• You’ve corrected a grammar mistake on a public sign.
• You know what “nonplussed” means and have used it in a sentence.
• The use of apostrophes to indicate plurals makes you weep for the future.
• You’ve spent way too long at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks or Apostrophe Catastrophes.
• When reading aloud, you say “bang” whenever you encounter an exclamation point.
• You pity the fools who use “whom” incorrectly in an attempt to sound smarter.
• You take grammar quizzes online for fun.
• You’re actually not great at Scrabble/Words With Friends because you’d rather spell the coolest word possible than the one that gives you the most points.
• You follow Grammarly on Facebook.

Scoring:

1-6: Sorry, but you’re not a grammar nerd. Study The Elements of Style and get back to us in a month.

7-12: Although you know your way around a sentence, you don’t diagram them for fun.

13-18: You have a red pen on your person at all times.

19-24: You sleep with a thesaurus under your pillow so you can dream new of new words.

25+: You are the ultimate word nerd. May all lesser word nerds bow before you.

What did you rate? Share your score below!

Grammar Basics: What Is Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement?

Pronouns need antecedents. That means that the thing (or person, or place) that the pronoun refers to needs to have been mentioned already by name somewhere earlier in the sentence or paragraph. If it’s not clear which thing the pronoun refers to, the reader can get quite confused.

Learn more about pronoun-antecedent agreement.

To learn more about grammar and to help us celebrate National Grammar Day this March, visit our new resource page.

The Five Best Holiday Stories to Get You in the Holiday Spirit

Not feeling the holiday spirit yet? Hectic days at work and evenings spent shopping may leave you low on holiday cheer, but the feelings of generosity, gratitude, and closeness to your loved ones are what truly make the holidays special. If music, movies, and weather aren’t getting you in the mood of the season, try reading a good book. Sit down with a holiday classic or enjoy a new read to celebrate the holidays, both religious and secular, that come at this time of year.

1I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dreidel by Caryn Yacowitz and David Slonim Holiday: Hanukkah beginning on December 6

This is a lovable children’s book about a family driving to visit their bubbe, who swallows a dreidel during Hanukkah supper. Her insatiable appetite leads her to consume more and more items, menorahs included, and her family tries to distract her from her appetite. The illustrations are parodies on famous works by da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rockwell, Matisse, and many others, adding a layer of fun to the story while teaching about the elements of Hanukkah, famous artists, and the art of parody.

2Siddhartha by Herman Hesse Holiday: Bodhi Day on December 8

December 8 is Bodhi Day, which is the day when Buddha, or Siddhartha, experienced enlightenment. To delve into the Buddha’s life, pick up Siddhartha, a novel written by Herman Hesse in 1922. The book follows Siddhartha’s life as he leaves his family on a journey to enlightenment. He bounces from a life of asceticism to hedonism back to asceticism, which offers you the opportunity to reflect on the materialism and excesses of the holiday season. Some consider it a must-read at least once in a lifetime.

3I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai Holiday: Human Rights Day on December 10

Read Malala’s story in celebration of Human Rights Day on December 10 to be inspired by her resilience and strength. Malala fought for her right to an education while living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan under control by the Taliban. She survived being shot in the head and went on to become an activist for education and to win the Nobel Peace Prize, making her the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.

4A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Holiday: Christmas on December 25

Arguably the most famous novel about Christmas, A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843. It tells the story of the curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation by visits of the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Dickens touches upon the traditions of Christmas such as family gatherings, winter, and warm atmosphere. It teaches that good will and compassion can overcome miserliness and reminds us that not everyone has a home with a table full of food to enjoy with family during the holidays.

5A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby Holiday: New Year’s Eve on December 31

A Long Way Down is a dark comedy about four people ready to end their lives, but their plans are foiled by the presence of one another as they meet on a roof in London. They make a pact to postpone their suicides and embark on a journey together. It is a story about confronting the limits of choice, regrets, mortality, and second chances. It may give you an appreciation for life that you can carry into the new year.

Whether you’ve read the five books on this list already or are reading about them for the first time, they’re enjoyable reads that will surely get you in the holiday mood. Find some time to relax with a hot drink and one of these great stories to get into the holiday spirit.

How Do You Spell Donut?

Donut is an alternate spelling of doughnut. Some dictionaries point out that donut is rarely used outside the United States. All of them recognize doughnut as the main spelling, as do some of the more popular style guides. Doughnut might be the spelling you should use if you want to be sure you’re not making a mistake.

Doughnuts: the thing no stereotypical law enforcement officer can be seen without. Think of The Simpsons‘ Chief Wiggum. Or, if you’re a fan of looking beyond stereotypes, think of Twin Peaks‘ agent Dale Cooper, who appreciated the importance of doughnuts even though he favored cherry pie and a good cup of coffee. You get the picture—doughnuts have their place in popular culture.

They’ve also been on the mind of nutrition specialists and doctors, who generally advise against eating too many of these sweet and tasty rings of dough fried in oil. But seeing how we’re not the stereotypical girls and boys in blue here, or doctors for that matter, our interest in doughnuts comes from a completely different place. Apparently, there are two ways to spell the word—doughnut and donut—and it’s sometimes not completely clear which of the two spellings is the correct one.

Donut or Doughnut—Which Spelling Is Correct?

The simple answer to this question is they both are. Doughnut is the original spelling, which means it’s the older one, having appeared in the early nineteenth century. If you pick up a dictionary, any dictionary, you’ll find doughnut.

But it’s also very likely you’ll find donut, too. It might be listed as an alternate spelling, and some dictionaries might make it very clear that it’s a spelling mostly used in the United States. Donut, the simpler spelling of the word, first appeared around sixty years after the longer version, and it started gaining traction by the first half of the twentieth century.

Style guides, however, will occasionally list doughnut as the preferred spelling, so it might be better to forgo the shorter spelling unless you’re sure the donut in your writing will not be flagged as a mistake.

Why Is Donut Spelled Two Ways?

What is a doughnut, or donut, if you will? It’s a small lump of dough, which was originally fried in fat. So you can see where the “dough” in doughnut comes from. The “nut” part is actually a different way of saying “a small lump.” Originally, the name of the treat was dough boy.

Donut is a simplification of the original spelling, and as such, it’s completely in the spirit of the American version of the English language. Noah Webster, the godfather of American lexicography, was a strong supporter of spelling reform. If you look at American English and British English today, you’ll see that the former has a strong tendency to prefer the simpler spellings of words.

Lastly, it’s possible to find a correlation between the rise of the simpler spelling and the rise of Dunkin’ Donuts. But while they might get the credit for popularizing it, Dunkin’ Donuts didn’t invent the simpler spelling. In fact, bakeries have been using it since the 1920s.

Grammar Shaming: “Who’s” Fault Is It?

There are very few things more annoying than a glaring grammar error in an otherwise acceptable piece of writing.

As lovers of language, you and I have a natural instinct to fix these errors. How do we deal, for example, with declarations that tweak our nose?

“I like her to.”

“Its a cold day.”

Seriously, people?!

Sometimes these grammar hiccups seem engineered to drive us up a wall, and they begin to take on a sinister quality. We encounter them over and over, and start to wonder if the writers are purposefully taunting us. Do they not understand that there are specific rules applied to how one writes? Have they never attended an English class? Do they not see that the very fabric of the Universe is at stake?

And from this rift, the troll inside of us emerges.

We find ourselves scouring Facebook posts, text messages, comment boards, and blogs. We find each typo, each error, and drag it out of the narrative like some slimy thing. We expose these abominations to the holy, cleansing light of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Then, for each infraction, we admonish the offender with an online version of a ruler crack across the knuckles.

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But it’s surprising how many of these enforcers stalk the Internet. Whenever they pop up to scold someone’s grammar in chat, or Facebook, they evoke a high school, “Mean Girls” atmosphere. The correction becomes a tacit, “I’m smarter than you.” The conversation quickly degenerates into a digital tarring and feathering that echoes a pseudo-erudite desire to anger or shame the “offender.” It rarely ends well, even in the best of circumstances, and the original point becomes lost in the absurd volley of angry posts.

Other grammarians take a different tack. They choose to say nothing, and sail blithely through the chaotic sea of mangled spelling and misused phrases. This alternative isn’t much better. If we love language, shouldn’t we try to preserve it? Is it not our duty to stamp out the weed-like errors we find before they spread? Is there no middle ground here?

My grandmother always said, “Show them what you want, don’t tell ‘em.” Envision the magic that can happen when one brave soul quietly sits down and types a beautiful sentence. If this is a battle you want to fight and win, I suggest the path of the quiet good example. Write well. Respond correctly. Use the correct capital letters in your posts, place commas appropriately in your texts, and think twice about the apostrophes in your blogs.

Remember that shame is a weapon, not a teaching tool. Using shame in the context of “helping” another writer creates a breakdown in communication. That’s the very thing we’re trying to avoid.

Most issues can be resolved with good proofreading. Online writers are often in a hurry and are unaware that they have broken a grammar rule. So show them how it’s done in your own writing. When you lead by example, you might be surprised how many people begin to replace a misplaced “to” with a “too.”

You’ve hurt no one in the process, and your karma’s clean.