“Many older adults said they feel positively about their lives,” the New York Times reported recently. That sentence probably sounds as acceptable to you as it did to the Times editors. But what if ...

When the subject of a sentence isn't doing something, the verb is passive. On the other hand, a sentence is active when the subject performs the verb (action). For example, in this sentence the verb ...

Should you say a person’s whereabouts "is" unknown or "are" unknown? Dictionaries say "whereabouts" is one of those words that may be used with either a singular or a plural verb. One reference book ...