The Editor’s Manual
Free learning resource on English grammar, punctuation, usage, and style.
Scare quotes indicate that a word or a phrase is being used in some nonstandard way or to indicate irony or disdain.
An infinitive (e.g., “to go”) is split when a word appears between “to” and the verb (“to not go”). It is fine to split the infinitive in English.
You may either omit or include the comma after greetings like “Hi” and “Hello” in informal email salutations, depending on preference.
Use “who” for animals with names, animals that are personified or anthropomorphized, or to indicate emotional closeness. Use “which” or “that” to discuss a species or an unknown animal without a name.
Both “than I” and “than me” are grammatically correct, since “than” can be used as either a preposition or a conjunction. “Than I” is seen more often in formal usage.
“It’s me” and “This is him/her” are generally acceptable in everyday usage. The strictly correct alternatives, “It is I” and “This is he/she,” are confined to highly formal usage.
“I” is a subject pronoun, while “me” is an object pronoun. In formal styles, use “I” in a compound subject and “me” in a compound object. “Me” is generally preferred in comparisons and after the “be” verb.
Use “you and I” as the subject and “you and me” as the object in a sentence. Avoid hypercorrection. “You and me” is used more often after the “be” verb and in comparisons.
“Either” is grammatically singular and used with singular verbs (like “is” and “has”) in formal usage. In informal usage, the word may be treated as either singular or plural.
“Neither,” which means “not either,” negates each of two possibilities individually. In formal writing, treat it as singular (“neither is”). In informal usage, it may take either a singular or a plural verb (“neither is/are”).