A Ruthless Editor blog follower noted that babysitting, which first appeared in the U.S. lexicon in 1937, is generally expressed as one word.
Yet she finds pet sitting and house sitting often expressed as two words, and in some cases they are hyphenated. Which are correct: pet sit / pet-sit / petsit or house sit / house-sit / housesit?
As I did the research, it occurred to me that some might consider this issue trivial in terms of grammar. On the other hand, these words could readily arise in news writing, fiction or blogging.
Here are some reliable sources and how they present all three: baby sit, pet sit and house sit: Continue
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A blog follower sent me an email questioning all right versus alright and when each should be used. The query arose at her weekly writers group gathering.
You’ve been out of the classroom for how long?
As the United States has struggled with catastrophic hurricanes, wildfires and mass shootings, I’ve heard people stumble over the use and pronunciation of incident and incidents, and of incidence (a valid word) and incidences (not a valid word in plural form).
If you send holiday greetings, or if you ever sign a gift card on behalf of your whole family, here’s a tip about writing a family name.
I have a thing about redundancies.
If you are puzzled by recent news reports and their use of pleaded or pled, these sources can help you decide which is right — or maybe I should say which is preferred.
A blog subscriber wrote to ask about whether, wondering if there is a difference between whether and whether or not.
Knowing how I follow developments in the grammar universe, a colleague sent me a recent article from 
