The abbreviations “i.e.” and “e.g.” come from Latin, but they remain widely used in the English language. Despite their prevalence, a lot of folks don’t know how to use them correctly or use them interchangeably. In truth, “i.e.” and “e.g.” have their own unique meanings. Thankfully, it’s easy to tell them apart so long as you know a little about their etymological roots.
The abbreviation “i.e.” comes from the Latin id est, meaning “in other words.” The abbreviation “e.g.,” on the other hand, stands for the Latin exempli gratia, which roughly translates to “for instance.” In practice, you should use “i.e.” when attempting to add a bit of clarification, whereas “e.g.” is better suited for listing out examples. As a helpful mnemonic device, think of the “i” in “i.e.” as the start of “in other words,” and the “e” in “e.g.” as “example.”
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Here’s a hypothetical situation: You’re texting someone about an upcoming trip to Europe, and want to give them some details. Either of these texts would be grammatically acceptable:
I plan to visit many European countries, i.e., I have a very full itinerary.
I plan to visit many European countries, e.g., Portugal, Spain, and France.
In the first sentence, the phrase following “i.e.” reiterates the message of the preceding phrase. It could also be read as, “I plan to visit many European countries; in other words, I have a very full itinerary.” Subbing in “for example” doesn’t work as well — “I plan to visit many European countries; for example, I have a very full itinerary” — so we know “i.e.” is the correct abbreviation. In the second sentence, however, “for example” makes more sense before the list of countries than “in other words,” so we know “e.g.” is correct. Also note that a comma always follows both of the abbreviations and their requisite periods in the sentences.
This should clear up how to differentiate between “i.e.” and “e.g.” — but you may still be wondering why you should use “e.g.” instead of “ex.” (an abbreviation of the word “example”). The main reason is that “ex.” can also be a shortened version of other words such as “executive” or “exact,” and it may not always mean “example.” But “e.g.” always means exempli gratia — the Latin avoids any confusion.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
Blue jeans are an iconic symbol of American fashion and a workwear staple for blue-collar professionals such as miners and ranch hands. But the term “jeans” has European origins dating to the 15th century.
Italy and France have long been at the forefront of fashion, lending materials and ideas to designers around the world. It makes sense, then, that these countries also have influenced fashion lingo in many languages. One particular example is the word “jeans,” which, despite its thoroughly American reputation, comes from a French term having to do with fabrics produced in an Italian city.
Your favorite pair of blue jeans can be traced back to the French jean fustian — a term that can be broken down into two parts. Jean refers to the Italian city of Genoa, which was known in the 15th century for producing a popular type of twilled cloth that the French referred to as fustian. So in essence, jean fustian is what the French called a sturdy cotton cloth made in Genoa, Italy.
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The singular “jean” first entered English around the mid-15th century, though it referred to the cloth, not a specific type of garment, such as pants. However, given its sturdy nature, jean was widely used to make workwear, which included durable pairs of pants. The plural “jeans” came about thanks to English-speaking sailors. When sailors arrived at the port city of Genoa, they were introduced to this sturdy, attractive workwear that was often dyed blue with indigo, as was popular at the time. Eventually, the term for this Genoese workwear became anglicized as “jeans.”
The modern version of jeans became popular around the mid-19th century, in large part due to Levi Strauss. Originally, these pants were officially known as “waist overalls” — Levi Strauss & Co. notes it wasn’t until the 1960s that the colloquialism “jeans” had a resurgence and became the norm. However, while the term was borrowed from jean fustian, the earliest Levis were primarily made of denim — a sturdy fabric akin to the Genoan fabric, but not exactly the same. In fact, the word “denim” has different European roots. It’s derived from the French serge de Nîmes, which referred to a sturdy woven fabric originally manufactured in Nîmes, France. By the 1860s, de Nîmes (“from Nîmes”) was also anglicized as “denim.”
Eventually, the word “jeans” superseded all other terms as a colloquialism for sturdy workwear — often blue — that has some vague connection to the Genoese sailor outfits from all those centuries ago. While it may not be entirely historically accurate to call pants made of denim “jeans” — given they usually have no direct connection to Genoa — it’s the sartorial norm.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
An idiom, by definition, is a phrase in which the overall meaning is understood separately from the individual meanings of the words. Some idioms are so ingrained in our collective vocabulary that we never think about what the true meanings are. Consider the idiom “break the ice.” This expression — meaning “to say or do something to relieve tension” — might seem like a modern invention designed for cocktail parties or business meetings, but it actually has roots in the Italian Renaissance.
For the origin of this well-loved idiom, we look to Desiderius Erasmus, a 15th-century Dutch theologian. Erasmus recorded a collection of over 4,000 annotated Greek and Latin proverbs (idioms) in his book Adagia. “Break the ice” is among these expressions, recorded in the first installment of the book as proverb No. 374. Erasmus credits this saying to an Italian humanist by the name of Francesco Filelfo. In his own words, Erasmus states that the expression “break the ice” means “to open the way and to be the first in beginning a task.” He says it is “derived from boatmen who send one of their number ahead to break up the ice on a frozen river and open the way for others.” In a modern twist, ships specifically designed for breaking up channel ice are dubbed “icebreakers.”
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William Barker — a 20th-century editor who compiled the work of Erasmus in The Adages of Erasmus — believes that Erasmus was citing Filelfo’s Epistolae, letters addressed to the leading humanists and lords of Italy. They exemplify the political and literary goings-on of the Italian Renaissance. Today, one volume of these letters is preserved in the renowned Uffizi Library in Florence, Italy. The specific expression that Filelfo uses in the letters is glaciem fregi, meaning “I have broken the ice.” Barker also notes that unlike nearly all of the other proverbs listed by Erasmus, “break the ice” is not found in any classical Latin literature in the figurative sense — adding an air of mystery to the origin of the expression.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, when the expression first emerged in English, it was used to reference the beginning of an undertaking, especially faced with difficulty or resistance, akin to the difficulty of literally breaking through ice in water. Oxford’s first citation of the phrase is from the mid-16th-century divorce papers for Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon: “This reuerend father..chaunced..to be one of the first that brake the yse, and [showed]..the inconvenience that followed.”
By the late 18th century, the expression had evolved slightly to mean “to do or say something to relieve tension or get conversation going” — the same manner in which we often use it today. We can see this usage in a 1795 collection of poems by Samuel Jackson Pratt, titled Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia: “Notwithstanding..,there is an air of distance, reserve, and even coldness, they are all.., replete with an anxious desire to break the ice.” While business meetings and orientation halls are less fanciful circumstances, the idiom’s meaning still stands, two centuries later.
Rachel is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. When she's not writing, you can find her wandering through a museum, exploring a new city, or advocating the importance of the Oxford comma.
The sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” might be a befitting addition to a Dr. Seuss rhyme, but it was created by famed linguist Noam Chomsky to illustrate an important grammatical theory.
Noam Chomsky, “the father of modern linguistics,” revolutionized language with topics such as generative grammar and the concept of universal grammar. But I’m fascinated by one nonsensical statement invented by Chomsky, which might be the weirdest sentence in English: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It’s correct from a strictly grammatical standpoint, but something about it is off. This sentence, aptly known as the “Chomsky sentence,” was an example used by the famed linguist to illustrate the idea that a sentence can be grammatically correct yet meaningless. He aimed to convey that syntax (sentence structure) is independent of semantics (meaning).
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The statement was featured in Chomsky’s 1957 book Syntactic Structures, and it appears to obey all the conventional rules of English grammar. It opens with a noun phrase (“colorless green ideas”) featuring two adjectives (“colorless” and “green”) that describe a noun (“ideas”). Next, the verb phrase, “sleep furiously,” brings action to the sentence, with the adverb “furiously” modifying the verb “sleep.” These are all permissible grammar choices, but that doesn’t mean the words in the sentence make sense together. This paradox is precisely the point: Chomsky concluded that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning.
Though Chomsky believed this sentence was illogical, others have worked to defend its semantics. David Policar of MIT argued that the sentence does make sense. In his humorous and long-winded defense, he explained that we’re simply looking at the words wrong. “Green,” for example, should be interpreted as “inexperienced,” meaning that it’s a new idea — not a colorful one. In this sense, “colorless” is an appropriate adjective because ideas are mere concepts that lack color.
Similarly, Policar argued that “sleep” can be a proper action for an idea if it means the idea is at rest or simply not thought of yet. He also argued that “sleeping furiously” is possible, just as “writing furiously” can mean writing intensely. According to Policar, the Chomsky sentence could be transcribed as, “New ideas (that lack color) are intensely resting, waiting to be discovered.” We don’t know if Chomsky ever came across Policar’s eccentric examination of the sentence, but we’re sure he would be amused by it.
What does the Chomsky sentence mean for an amateur linguist such as myself? It’s just another quirk of language that lets me know there’s always more to learn.
Featured image credit: Ulf Andersen/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Rachel is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. When she's not writing, you can find her wandering through a museum, exploring a new city, or advocating the importance of the Oxford comma.
Do you know the difference between “a lot,” “allot,” and “alot”? One means “a large amount,” the other means “to distribute,” and one is not a word at all.
“A lot,” “allot,” “alot” — these terms may look alike and sound alike, but it’s time to settle any questions about this trio once and for all.
Let’s start by eliminating one: “Alot” is not a word. It’s just a common misspelling. You’ve probably seen “alot” enough times that it feels right, but just because we see it a lot doesn’t make it correct. Writing “alot” instead of “a lot” would be akin to writing “alittle” instead of “a little.”
“A lot” means “a large amount,” and the term can function as either a quantifier/indefinite pronoun or an adverb. For example, in the case of “She has a lot of meetings today,” “a lot” is an indefinite pronoun modifying “meetings.” If you were to say, “He talks a lot,” “a lot” is an adverb modifying “talks.”
While common in everyday English, “a lot” is informal and should be avoided in formal writing. In professional writing, consider more polished substitutions. For adverbs, try “often,” “frequently,” or “greatly.” If you need a quantifier or indefinite pronoun, use “much,” “many,” or “plenty,” depending on the context.
“Allot” is a verb meaning “to distribute or to assign,” often appearing when something is split into smaller shares. You might say, “She allots 20 minutes for each meeting,” or “He allotted adequate resources to each person.”
“Lot” on its own has additional meanings: a tract of land, a place to park, a person’s fate, or a portion of a whole. While perhaps not the best writing, this sentence is grammatically correct: “His lot in life was to allot lots to a lot of people.”
So remember: Use “a lot” for quantity, use “allot” for assigning, and avoid “alot” … a lot.
Samantha Abernethy is a freelancer in Chicago. When she isn't staring at a laptop, you can find her sniffing out the best coffee with her greyhound Ruby, or chasing her kids around the nearest library.
19 Most Commonly Confused Terms in English Grammar
Get a grip on tricky word pairs with this guide to English grammar’s most commonly confused terms, complete with practical tips and memorable tricks to help you choose the right word every time.
Imagine you’re drafting an important email to your boss when you pause to debate whether to write “affect” or “effect,” or “ensure” or “insure.” Even seasoned writers encounter these common word-choice challenges. Whether you’re a student, professional, or casual writer, mastering these frequently confused terms can elevate your writing from good to great. Let’s take a quick look at tricky word pairs (or trios) and learn some practical tips to help you choose the right term every time.
Affect vs. Effect
Of all the words on this list, these two may be the hardest to keep straight. “Affect” is usually used as a verb meaning “to have an effect on.” (The adorable puppy affected her mood.) “Effect” is most often used as a noun that means “a change produced by a cause.” (The effect was that she smiled for the rest of the day.) Need a tip to help you remember the difference between the similar words? Swap out the word in question with “alter” and “result.” If “alter”(meaning “to change character or composition”) fits the sentence, then “affect” is the correct word. If “result” (meaning “a consequence or outcome”) is a better substitution, then “effect”is the right term. Consider the example sentences used earlier:
The adorable puppy altered her mood. The result was that she smiled for the rest of the visit.
The adorable puppy resulted her mood. The alter was that she smiled for the rest of the visit.
The first version is correct, so we know “affect” belongs in the first sentence and “effect” in the latter.
Of course, “affect” can also be used as a noun, but that’s limited to psychological contexts (such as a “depressed affect”), and “effect” can be a verb meaning “to bring about change.” These constructions are less commonly used than the examples given above.
Counsel vs. Council
These words are homophones — they sound alike but are spelled differently. The verb “counsel” means “to advise someone,” but it can also be used as a noun in similar contexts. (A lawyer offers her clients legal counsel.) On the other hand, a council is a group that gives advice. Think of a city councilgathering to vote on installing a new traffic light at a busy intersection.
Everyday vs. Every Day
Trying to decide between these two terms can be tricky, but once you understand the difference, it’s a piece of cake. “Everyday” is an adjective that means “ordinary” or “commonplace.” (Her mother wore her everyday dress to the market.) Separate this term into two words when you want to use it to mean “daily.” (She rode the bus to work every day.) If “single” can be inserted between “every” and “day” to clarify, then “every day” is the correct term. (She rode the bus to work every single day.)
Insure vs. Ensure
This word pair may cause you to check on your current insurance coverage. To insure an item means it is secured or protected, usually financially. (Jana insured her heirloom jewelry in case of theft.) On the other hand, “ensure” means “to make certain a problem doesn’t happen.” (Jana wanted to ensure her jewelry wouldn’t be stolen, so she kept it in a lock box.)
Led vs. Lead
These homophones sound alike but have different meanings and spellings. Both words rhyme with “bed,” but “lead” is a type of metal and “led” is the past tense of the verb “lead” (which is spelled the same as the metal, but rhymes with “heed”). To explain how Angelica showed Sari the way to math class, we could say that she led the other girl through the halls. But if Sari shared her pencil with Angelica, we would call it a lead pencil.
Lose vs. Loose
So many people get tripped up by an extra “O.” These words sound similar, yet their meanings are very different. When you lose, it means you’ve failed to win at a game or other contest. Or maybe you just can’t find something. (I lose my keys every time I walk in this house.) When describing something that is not firmly or tightly fixed, “loose” is the correct word. (He had a loose grip on the leash.) There’s also a subtle difference in pronunciation: “Lose” is pronounced with an “ooz” sound, and “loose” has an “oos” sound.
Than vs. Then
Use “than” to compare ideas or elements. (The yacht is bigger than the boat.) The word “then” is useful to discuss time or sequence. (The boat docked, then the yacht entered the harbor.)
There vs. Their vs. They’re
This trio of homophones is notorious for causing confusion. “There” is all about place and location. (Her cousins walked from over there.) “Their” is a possessive pronoun indicating something belongs to a group of people. (Her cousins brought their doll collection.) Finally, “they’re” is a contraction of the words “they are.” (They’re going to play with the dolls.)
Who vs. Which
The most straightforward rule to remember is that “who” always refers to people, and “which” always refers to things. For example, in the sentence, “I know a doctor who can treat your cold,” the word “who” refers to the doctor. In another example, “Margo showed us her coat, which she bought last week,” “which” describes an object, the coat.
Jennifer A. Freeman is the Senior Editor of Word Smarts and Word Daily. When she's not searching for a perfect synonym or reaching "Genius" level on Spelling Bee, she's playing with her Welsh Terrier in Greenville, SC.
With our apologies to Nintendo’s famous Italian plumber Mario, this idiom originally had nothing to do with pipes — so let’s explore why people tend to get it mixed up.
In 1929, René Magritte painted “The Treachery of Images,” featuring an image of a pipe accompanied by a French phrase that translates to “This is not a pipe.” Carrying that logic over to the English language, we’re here to alert you that the idiom “down the pipe” actually has nothing to do with pipes at all — it’s always been “down the pike.” So, why are the words “pike” and “pipe” so commonly mixed up? Is it just a misinterpretation based on similar sounds? Let’s dive in and look at the history.
The term “turnpike” refers to an expressway on which tolls are usually charged. Throughout history, people have often used turnpikes to travel between cities, encountering new and unfamiliar things along the way. By the early 20th century, this gave rise to the idiom “down the pike,” which can be used in a couple of ways. You can say something “came down the pike” when referring to something that happened in the course of certain events, or you can say something is “coming down the pike” if it’s anticipated to happen sometime in the future.
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One major historic event also contributed to the idiom’s popularity: the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. One of the main attractions was a mile-long carnival midway called “the Pike.” During the event, visitors were encouraged to come “down the Pike” to witness the many stunning exhibits and amusements. Thanks to the fair’s immense popularity, the phrase quickly caught on among those who attended the exposition or who perused newspaper reports about the proceedings.
That midway is long gone, though, and not everyone is familiar with the word “turnpike,” as those roads are located in only certain parts of North America. This has likely contributed to people confusing “down the pike” for the similar-sounding phrase “down the pipe,” which has come to be accepted as meaning the same thing. The confusion also may be a conflation of “down the pike” and “in the pipeline” — the latter of which is a similar idiom that refers to things in development. So even though it’s impossible to conclusively say exactly where or how “down the pipe” originated, some argue it’s the more popular option today.
But should you use “down the pike” or “down the pipe” going forward? Well, the former option is technically correct, and you’d be right to use it. But the English language is also constantly evolving, and “down the pipe” is widely accepted today. No matter which you choose, the people around you will likely understand what you mean.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
When I’m having an off day, saying I’m “feeling blue” is the easiest way to quickly communicate my state of mind. It works as an explanation because I might not want to get too deep into why I’m sad, but it helps to explain that I’m not at my best. As a color, blue has different connotations, but “feeling blue” is a general sentiment of sadness, which comes from many sources.
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In color theory, blue generates feelings of calmness and relaxation — maybe calling to mind a tranquil body of water or a calm sky. Since scientists have also found that blue inspires feelings of reliability, businesses often choose to use blue in their company logos. And yet at the same time, the word “blue” representing a feeling of sadness dates back to Chaucer’s poetry in the 1300s. The physical condition of black and blue skin, caused by a bruise, could be an origin of the metaphor of feeling blue, and writers used to call a depressive or melancholy feeling the “blue devil,” all the way back in the 1700s.
“The blues” referred to sadness as far as back 1741, but the expression really took off with the rise of the blues music genre. In the 1860s, several musical styles coalesced to form the blues, which developed in the rural U.S. south out of African American folk songs. The genre found a wider audience in the 1940s as Black people migrated to cities. A blues song has a characteristic sad sound, built on the blues scale with minor notes on the third and fifth. The thudding bass line and percussion also give the genre its signature groove. Blues lyrics tended to focus on general hardships and the things in life that were getting the singer down emotionally.
When the events of the day have you feeling blue, play some music from one of the blues greats — Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith — or a modern practitioner such as Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, or Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. You may still be feeling blue, but the music will be singing to your emotions.
Julia Rittenberg is a culture writer and content strategist driven by a love of good stories. She writes most often about books for Book Riot. She lives in Brooklyn with a ton of vintage tchotchkes that her cat politely does not knock over.
To the average person, “Wi-Fi” appears to be an abbreviation. Those in the technical know might already know the secret meaning behind the title of wireless internet.
When you set up your home internet, do you stick with the internet provider’s router name or do you re-name your Wi-Fi signal to something clever, like “Pretty Fly for a Wi-Fi” or “Tell My Wi-Fi Love Her”? Whichever camp you’re in, if you’re not an IT person you might never have thought about the meaning of “Wi-Fi.” At first glance, you might assume it’s an abbreviation of the phrase “wireless fidelity,” on the pattern of “Hi-Fi”/”high fidelity” and “Lo-Fi”/”low fidelity.” But you may be surprised to learn that “Wi-Fi” isn’t an abbreviation and it doesn’t stand for anything — it’s just a name for wireless internet.
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In the late 1990s, work rapidly progressed on a new wireless technology that utilized radio waves instead of cables for the purpose of internet connectivity. This became known as the “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence” — a phrase that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The developers of this new tech were in need of a more marketable term for commercial use. So in 1999, the newly formed Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) unveiled a simplified and much catchier alternative: “Wi-Fi.”
This trademarked term is now synonymous with wireless internet, and according to the official trademark, it should always be written as “Wi-Fi” (not “wifi” or “WiFi”). If you don’t believe us, just ask Phil Belanger, a founding member of WECA who presided over the selection of the title: “Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything. It is not an acronym. There is no meaning.”
In an attempt to explain the term and give it more depth, the group briefly attached the tagline “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” to it, although this doesn’t seem to have cleared up the confusion. Instead, this is largely why so many people still mistakenly assume “Wi-Fi” is short for “wireless fidelity.” Though “Wi-Fi” doesn’t have a deeper meaning, the fluidity of the rhyming sounds has likely enabled the term’s lasting appeal — and allows questions such as “Is the Wi-Fi out?” and “What’s your Wi-Fi password?” to roll off the tongue so easily.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
There’s no clear-cut path to pluralization for some English nouns, forcing us to memorize grammatical oddities. Are you guilty of these pluralization faux pas?
Pluralization can be unexpectedly complex. While updating my writer’s bio recently, I found myself tangled in the semantics of “alumna.” It’s a Latin-origin noun that takes different forms when referring to genders and in the plural: “Alumna” refers to a singular female graduate, “alumnus” is a male graduate, and “alum” is a gender-neutral casual choice. But “alumna” seemed like the plural form to me at first, because I was thinking of other Latin plurals, such as “phenomenon” pluralized to “phenomena.”
In this case, however, there’s another Latin pattern at work, which turns “alumna” and “alumnus” into “alumni,” just as one cactus becomes many cacti. Why invite one fungus to the party when you could have several fungi? (Sorry for the dad joke.) The more I dug into the possibilities of plurals, the more I realized that this section of English grammar rules requires navigating a minefield of irregularities.
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Plural words ending in “f,” for example, can cause grammatical grief. The appropriate plural form of “roof” is “roofs” — but “rooves” is an archaic alternative that sounds at home in a Shakespearean drama. And then there’s the deceptively simple word “beef.” It would make sense for the plural form to be “beefs,” in line with “chefs” or “reefs” (or the aforementioned “roofs”), but the proper form is actually “beeves” (promise!), following the same pluralization pattern as “leaves” or “hooves,” which swap out the “f” in “leaf” and “hoof” for the suffix “-ves.”
Of “beeves,” language Professor Roly Sussex explains, “It’s archaic and dialectal and not really used very much nowadays,” though it is still correct. The word “beef” is most commonly used today to refer to the meat that comes from cows, rather than the farming usage of the word, which is “a cow, bull, or ox fattened for its meat.” It’s the latter sense that would use the plural “beeves,” so unless you’re a farmer selling cattle, it’s OK to use “beef” as a collective noun on your grocery list.
When pluralizing other nouns, the most common rule is “add an ‘s'” — but with words ending in certain letters (“y,” “f,” “ch,” “x,” “s”), there are additional general guidelines. Plural nouns for names of animals are often confused because there is no blanket rule for when they change form. “Sheep,” “deer,” and “moose” remain the same in singular and plural, while “goose” turns into “geese.” But perhaps one of the most flip-flopping animal names is “fish.” Generally speaking, “fish” is the correct singular and plural version, as in, “Look at those beautiful koi fish.” But in some literary, poetic, or scientific contexts (primarily when referring to multiple species), “fishes” gets the nod — as heard in the iconic line from The Godfather, “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.”
Even familiar phrases for groups of people can be bewildering, especially in compound nouns. It’s essential to pluralize the principal noun and not other parts of the word. For example, you’d call a group of people walking on the street “passersby,” not “passerbys,” because “passer” (the base noun) must be pluralized. Similarly, “sisters-in-law” properly pluralizes the noun, not the suffix. However, you’ll still find an occasional compound noun that tacks an “s” onto the end, regardless of the noun placement, such as “forget-me-nots.” Just remember that English is full of exceptions that make the rule.
Rachel is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. When she's not writing, you can find her wandering through a museum, exploring a new city, or advocating the importance of the Oxford comma.
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