Amount and number (the nouns, not the verbs) often get misused. Amount is a mass noun and you use it when talking about things you can’t count: “There is a large amount of smog.” Number is used, well, for things you can number, so that should help you remember the rule. “I filed a number of lawsuits.”
I could say I see “a huge number of instances in which writers misuse the word amount, and a large amount of misunderstanding surrounding these two words.”
I often find myself trimming down words when I do content edits for my clients. I’ve mentioned in earlier posts…
I see a lot of confusion about when to spell out the time of day and when to show it…
Whether or not Sherlock Holmes ever said “Elementary, Watson” is debatable. What’s not in question is Holmes’s keen powers of…
Plurals can get messy. and the rules even messier. The Chicago Manual of Style tends toward logic, but in certain cases…
Not those kind of four-letter words. But in the same way you might ask yourself whether those four-letter words are necessary…
I sometimes have trouble with the preposition onto. Some of the time it’s pretty easy to know when I mean…
[related_books]
Subscribe to my email blasts to level up your writing and be notified of upcoming events and offers!
No products in the cart.
I graduated from High School in 1979 and from college in 1983. I have a BA in English/Creative Writing and Psychology (dual degree). My mother was a proofreader for technical journals for many years and also the English secretary at the undergraduate office of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. I have to admit, many of the grammatical posts I read here and in other bloggers’ posts sound like grammarians have made up a new language to describe rules that have existed for ages. I really feel out of the loop…has our language changed that much in 30 years?