Don't get fooled by percentages

The Podcast

Uh-oh, "irregardless" isn’t going away anytime soon. Take a deep breath while we dig into this hated word’s history, from its first appearance in 1795 to today.

And then, do you love a good plot twist? In honor of National Novel Writing Month, we look at the psychology of surprises in fiction.

Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Transcript, YouTube.

From 'The Grammar Daily': Percentages Versus Raw Numbers

When you’re writing medical, political, or financial news, it’s important to understand that big percentage changes can mean small overall increases or decreases. Make sure you're conveying the right message.

For example, an article that reports a 50% increase in the rate of a rare disease may be telling you that instead of 1 in a million people getting the dreaded floogety flork disease every year, now it's 1.5 people. A 50% increase sounds a lot scarier than an additional 160 or so people in the United States.

Percentages aren’t always misleading, but it’s often worth checking the raw numbers, too.

What I’m Reading

Hans Christian Andersen crafted paper-cut scenes while telling his stories

"Andersen was nothing if not a showman. ... He would spend his time regaling audiences large and small with stories. As he did so, very often, he would be attacking innocent pieces of paper, not with tiny delicate scissors, but with massive ones. At the end of his stories, he would unfold the paper sheets to reveal little masterpieces."— princeton.edu (h/t John Overholt)?

Alt-Text: The meditative art of describing images

"The more I wrote alt-text, the more I realized there was something meditative and poetic about it. I was no longer merely looking at images; I was noticing them, examining their features. Trying to give a nuanced description of an image has the effect of gently alienating you from the image — and I mean that in the positive, useful sense of 'alienating’. You have to look at it with fresh eyes.” — Clive Thompson

Start Your Holiday Shopping Now

My tip-a-day book, "The Grammar Daily," is like the tip-of-the day calendars you love, but you get to keep it forever. As I write this, the print book and ebook are the No. 1 and No. 2 new releases in the Grammar Reference section at Amazon! ?

I favor the print version because the book has 13 word search puzzles, along with word scramble puzzles and a few quizzes. The print version also makes a great gift for your favorite word lovers.

"The Grammar Daily" also appears to be part of a buy 3 for the price of 2 promotion right now. Buy it today!

Completely Unrelated

The largely untold story of how one guy in California keeps the world’s computers running on the right time zone. (Well, sort of.)

Thanks for reading (and listening!),

Mignon Fogarty

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?? I'm Mignon Fogarty, host of the?Grammar Girl podcast, founder of the?Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network, creator of five LinkedIn Learning courses, author of?ten books about language, and creator of the AI Sidequest newsletter.