A Smart Guide to Friendships & English Tips From A Master Grammarian - SYSK Choice
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Today on Something You Should Know, simple ways to reduce the number of emails you get. Then, how friendship works, why we need friends, and why friends often come and go. It's absolutely normal to go through these breakups with friends, and actually every seven years we lose about half our friends. Also, about half of our friends don't consider us their friends. What we do know is that the longer a friendship has lasted, the more likely it is to continue to last.

Also, some interesting intel about how you chew your food. And some common questions and answers about the English language, how we speak it and how we write it. I get asked a lot about effect and effect. The one with the "e" is a noun and the one with an "a" is a verb. So, "Your behavior affects me." That would be an "a." "Your behavior has an effect on me." would be an "e."

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Something you should know. Fascinating Intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. Like a lot of people, I start my day, pretty much every day, checking emails. Because there is a lot of it. I get a lot of emails and I kind of like to get through it and weed them out and throw away the junk and file the other stuff. And it turns out a lot of people start their day checking their email inbox to get rid of the clutter. And so maybe...

the solution would be to try to stop the clutter from coming in in the first place. And there are six basic rules that can really help cut back on some of that inbox clutter, according to Caitlin Sherwood, who wrote a book called Overcome the Email Overload. First of all, when you send a message, you can sign off by saying no reply needed. That way you won't get the reply of thanks or great, which just clutters up your inbox.

Another suggestion, when making a request, finish with thanks in advance to prevent the thanks-you're-welcome loop that tends to go on. When completing a response to an email request, end with a conclusive statement, like, hope this helped. Use FYI in the subject line, which helps to specify that the message is solely for informational purposes only and doesn't need a reply.

And don't write statements phrase-like questions like, "Peter and Laura did a great job, didn't they?" Because your co-workers will feel compelled to answer the "didn't they" question and you then end up with more pointless emails.

When you receive an email and you're not the intended recipient, you're on the CC list, but you must reply, send your responses only to the sender instead of to everybody. And that way you'll cut down on all those other people's clutter as well. And that is something you should know. ♪

Friendship is interesting. There's no manual on how to make or keep friends. Friends come to us in different ways at different times. Some stay, some go, but I think we all have a sense that friends are important. Still, some of us are better at friendship than others. Some people have a lot of friends. Some people don't have any friends.

Here to talk about the importance of friendship and how to make and keep friends is psychologist Dr. Marissa Franco. She's been studying friendship for a long time. Her work has appeared in Psychology Today, The New York Times, and Scientific American. She's author of a book called Platonic, How the Science of Attachment Can Make and Keep Friends.

Hi, Marissa. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. So this is kind of an obvious question maybe, but why are friendships so important? So many reasons. I mean, connection is related to our mental health and well-being. Research finds that loneliness is as toxic as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

And that our level of connection actually predicts how long we live even more so than our diet and our exercise, for example. So I think just like we can consider like food, oxygen, water as central to our well-being and our homeostasis, so is human connection. And yet I hear, I think I've heard that people tend to have fewer friends than they used to. Is that true?

That's absolutely true. And we've also been finding that people are spending more time with their romantic partners and alone over the past few decades and less time with their friends and everybody else. Okay, so friendship is good for you. So why is loneliness bad for you? So we tend to think of loneliness as just a feeling, but it's actually a way of perceiving the world. So because historically, when we were lonely, we were separated from our tribes. We were in danger.

That led to loneliness kind of leading to a bunch of ways of viewing the world and relating to others. So when we're lonely, according to the research, we actually think that people like us less. We actually like other people less. We actually report having less faith in humanity. All of this is so that we can protect ourselves at times of loneliness. But obviously, this can also be very self-sabotaging such that

loneliness can become a self-perpetuating cycle because of how it affects how we perceive and relate to others. Well, that's clearly a problem if what you're saying is so, that if you're lonely, it makes you act in a way that alienates people and makes you more lonely. So loneliness gets you more loneliness.

Exactly, Mike. And actually, the most successful interventions against loneliness are not the ones that have focused on connecting people with others, but actually on changing people's maladaptive thought patterns that are triggered when they're lonely. Which means what? Which means that if you think people don't like you, or if you're very cynical about not liking other people, reframing those beliefs, trying to think differently so that you can be more open to connecting with people. It does seem that...

Friendships are much easier for kids. Kids seem to have very little trouble making friends and adults seem to have a lot of trouble making friends. Yeah. So I don't think it's as much about being kids as much as it is about the settings that we're in when we're kids, which provide for factors that sociologists really consider central for making connections, such as continuous unplanned interaction. So I'm seeing you consistently without planning it and shared vulnerability.

And when we have these factors in place, friendship tends to happen more or less organically. But as adults, we tend to no longer have these environments because at work, sure, we're seeing each other every day. Well, maybe less so now with everybody working from home.

But we're not necessarily having that vulnerability in the workplace where people may only know one side of us. And so because of that, I think, unfortunately, a lot of us might rely on the script from childhood where we just need to wait for friendships to come into our lives organically, not realizing that as adults, it no longer works that way. Yeah, I never thought of it that way. I thought it was more of a, you know, kids are just more willing to go up to somebody and say, hi, I want to be my friend. And adults don't do that.

I can see that too, that adults may be a little bit more afraid of initiating with other people. And that's honestly one of the biggest barriers that I see when it comes to making friends. We're all so, so afraid of rejection. But the truth is, Mike, that we're actually a lot less likely to be rejected than we think. There's research on a phenomenon called the liking gap, where when strangers interact and they predict how much the other person likes them, they tend to underestimate how much the other person likes them.

which is why one of my biggest tips for making friends as an adult is

is to assume people like you. So you'll actually initiate with people. And now the research also finds that when researchers sort of manipulated people to think that they would be liked, even though that wasn't true, people actually became more likable because they were more open, more agreeable, more friendly. It's called the acceptance prophecy. Whereas people that think they'll be rejected suffer from something called rejection sensitivity. And what happens is when these people are exposed to ambiguous circumstances, like someone's quieter,

they tend to escalate by shutting down, being withdrawn, and they sort of will and manifest the same rejection that they fear. So when we see someone do something like get quiet or somebody does something that we perceive as rejection, we blow that up. And it's often just all in our head. Yeah. And you know what? I will say...

surprisingly from my read of the research, who's most likely to reject you is the person that fears rejection the most because they're engaging in self-protective behaviors to protect themselves against rejection, which tend to manifest as rejection of other people. Because I've always thought that, you know, if you're at a function, if you're at a party or some sort of event,

And there's lots of people there and people are reluctant to go up and talk to you. Well, why are those other people there? They wouldn't be there if they didn't want to talk to you. They would have stayed home. Exactly.

Yeah, there was a really interesting study of networking events that found that 95% of people wanted to meet new people. And yet most people interacted with people they already know. But I think it's really helpful to know this information because now if I go into a social event, I know everybody's just waiting for me to introduce myself. And they're more than likely going to be very open to it if I do.

To make a friend is to do what? Because every friend has to start as an acquaintance first or just someone you meet. What's that progression look like?

Yeah, so one thing that I suggest to people is to build social infrastructure, which to me means recreating environments that give you continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. So that means joining an improv club, joining a language group. Don't join something that's one-off because when you just go to something that happens once, you don't capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, which is our tendency to like people the more familiar that they are.

So it's normal and natural when we first meet someone for us to be uncomfortable, for it to be awkward, for us to be weary. But according to the research, if we can stick with it for a few months, what will happen over time is that not only will they like us more, but we'll also like them more. And this happens completely unconsciously. We don't even have to talk to each other. But if we've been exposed to each other's faces over time, we'll come to like each other more and more.

Well, what are some of the things that bring people, theoretically, more together? I mean, meeting somebody at an event, you might meet 10, 15, 20 people. They're not all going to become friends. So what is it that makes the friend stick out?

So we all tend to have something called disregard criteria, which are snap judgments we might make as to whether someone will be our friend. And this might be based on someone's age, someone's gender, someone's race, these sort of criteria that we use, very shallow criteria to determine whether someone can be our friend. And so we'll be more interested and open if someone doesn't violate our unconscious disregard criteria.

Other than that, I would say commonality, if we hear that people have things in common and why commonality leads to friendship is because, you know, people have asked me what's the secret to being more likable. And it's actually to like people. There's a theory called the theory of inferred attraction, which basically indicates that people like people that they think like them. And when someone has something in common with us, we assume that they'll like us more, which makes us more comfortable continuing on with the friendship.

So like in romance, you can't go up to somebody and say, will you be my friend? Because that's going to typically make the person run away because there's something weird about saying, will you be my friend? Just like, will you be my girlfriend or my boyfriend or whatever? And so are there preferred more successful ways to start the relationship and continue to build the relationship? Or it just kind of happens or it doesn't?

I would say friendship absolutely does not happen organically. In fact, people that see it as something that happens without effort are more lonely over time, according to the research. So if I had to talk to someone who has no friends and wants to make a new friend, I would say find a hobby or interest that you can engage in with a community over time, right? So you can capitalize on that mere exposure effect.

You have to attend to overcoming something called overt avoidance, which is our tendency to avoid interacting with people generally because they scare us, but also covert avoidance, which is our tendency to when we show up to interact with other people, we actually close ourselves off mentally. We're on our phone. We're talking to the one person we already know. We're not introducing ourselves to others.

So you also have to overcome covert avoidance by saying to someone at that book club you join, "Hey, my name's Marissa. How did you like this book? How long have you been coming here?"

After you've been going for a few times, pick the person that you feel like you connect with the most so far, and then ask them like, "Hey, I'd love for us to keep connecting. Would it be okay with you if we exchange contact information?" And then reach out to them to meet up either before or after the next book club event. And importantly, you'll still have that social infrastructure of the book club, which will continue to nurture the friendship over time, even if you're not consistently reaching out to them. But it's a good idea to also consistently reach out to them to build the friendship.

Marissa Franco is my guest. She's an expert on friendship and author of the book, Platonic, How the Science of Attachment Can Make and Keep Friends. There are just some things you come across that you have to tell people about. And because I, like you, have a cell phone, and I know it can get expensive, I'm telling people about Mint Mobile. They offer premium wireless for $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan.

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Just go to Indeed.com slash something right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on something you should know. Indeed.com slash something. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. So Marissa, is there any sense of how long it takes to make a friend? How long it takes to go from zero to 60 to get to a friendship?

Yeah, there's a researcher, Jeffrey Hall, who has his study on how many hours does it take, and he finds about 150 hours.

I guess part of me is a little bit skeptical because I know that making a friend also depends on how we interact. And there are certain ways we can interact that make us more likely to become friends with one another. So there is a study that followed basically new friends over 12 weeks to predict who would stay friends over time, for whom would the friendship intensify. And one of the most important factors was whether people shared affection towards each other.

You know, compliment each other, praise each other. And that's, I think, is really, really important for solidifying connection, according to a theory called risk regulation theory. Risk regulation theory argues that basically we decide how much to invest in a relationship based on our perception of how likely we are to get rejected.

If we think we won't get rejected, we invest more. And so when you share affection with someone, when you say, oh, I've just really enjoyed your company or you really made me think when we've hung out together or I just really appreciate this, like, thank you so much. When we do things like that, we tell people, hey, you're not going to get rejected. And remember how I said fear of rejection is one of the biggest barriers to friendships.

So the more that we can make people feel like they won't be rejected, the more they'll want to be friends with us. And so the implications of this is if you want to belong, make other people feel like they'll belong. So not all friends are equal, right? You have good friends, you have a best friend, you have some, you know, minor friends. So how do people end up where they end up on that hierarchy? Yeah.

Well, one of the big factors I would say is vulnerability. Are you able to feel comfortable being vulnerable with each other, sharing your struggles, sharing what's really going on? There's this study on, it's called like the 36 questions to fall in love that was covered in the New York Times, but it's based on the study that when this researcher gave people questions of increasing intimacy to do together, they found that at the end of just a short period of time for people answering these questions, they reported being vulnerable.

Pretty close to each other just within an hour and so that research really finds and other research that finds that actually when we're vulnerable people like us more where I think a lot of us have the misconception that people like us less but in fact when we're vulnerable we show to people that we trust them and that we like them and so when we can really really be vulnerable with each other that's when we see the friendship really deepening. And to be vulnerable means what?

It means to share something that you fear is risky or exposing. Like? Like me sharing what I'm struggling with, me sharing my relationship issues, me sharing even what has put me in a bad mood today. It's me sharing information that...

It's me sharing information that we're in. I might feel like you can use it against me, or I might feel like if you don't respond positively to this information, I'm going to be particularly affected by that. And that's why when people do respond positively, it really builds our sense of trust with them. What about the lifespan of a friendship? Some friendships last forever and some fade away and some break up.

Absolutely. And I wanted to share that it's absolutely normal to go through these breakups with friends. And actually, every seven years, we lose about half our friends. Interestingly, also about half of our friends don't consider us their friends. So that's technically not a friendship because friendship is founded on reciprocity.

And so because of that, I think generally we can think that friendships are going to fall away. What we do know from the research is that the longer a friendship has lasted, the more likely it is to continue to last. But in general, we will be losing friends throughout our lifespan. Wait, you said half our friends don't consider us friends? Yeah, yeah. Half our friends don't reciprocate the friendship. Isn't that sad? Yeah.

Well, I don't know. I don't think I get it. How could you think someone is a friend and they don't? You know, it just happens. I guess people have different definitions of what they might consider a friend.

And so it's hard, I think, for us to put our finger on. And that's one of the, I would say, the difficulties of friendship. It's so ambiguous, right? We don't have the sort of proof that someone's invested in us like we might have with someone who's married or we share blood with, which is why I think friendship can really bring out some of our insecurities. Well, how has social media, like you say, and people say they have friends on social media, but those aren't friends. And I also wonder if

Social media interferes with friendship because it's an easy way to keep in touch with people, but you're not really in touch with people.

Yeah, so it's a really mixed bag in the research, I would say, because social media's link with loneliness really depends on how you use it. If you're someone who uses social media to facilitate in-person interaction, you're sliding in someone's DMs on Instagram to be like, let's hang out, you're going to be less lonely. But if you use it to replace in-person interaction, yeah.

If you're just interacting with people over social media and you're not seeing people in real life, then it's going to make you more lonely. You know, interestingly, I would say when we take a step back and look at the larger research on this topic, that social media has been a net negative for our connections.

Because actually in 2012, there was a stark increase in loneliness, especially for people between the ages of 18 and 24. In 2012, people between the ages of 18 and 24 had the best mental health of any age group. And now they have the worst. And what happened in 2012? That was the popularization of the smartphone. No coincidence there.

Yeah, it's really fascinating. You know, like these smartphone usage, especially for the younger generations have been found to decrease their level of empathy because we develop empathy through looking into someone's eyes. And so when we're not doing that, we can't really read other people's feelings, which is so key to being able to connect with people.

So what about friendship do you, that we haven't talked about? Do you think people either don't understand or would benefit from knowing that they may not know from all the work you've done? You know, I kind of mentioned this, but I wanted to just sort of bring out this theme. And my read of the research is that in general, the world is a lot safer than what we assume and what we predict. I already talked about the liking gap,

where researchers found that when strangers interact, they underestimate how much the other person is to like them. There's also a phenomenon called the beautiful mess effect, which basically finds that when we're vulnerable, we think people are judging us more than they actually are. And we underestimate how positively they're perceiving us when we're vulnerable.

Similarly, when we share affection, we assume it'll come off as more awkward than it will. And we discount how much other people will appreciate it and be thankful for it. And so in general, I think making friends feels like a risk. And it is a risk. Intimacy is a risk. We might be rejected.

But it's actually far less likely, it's far less risky than we think it is. And so I want to encourage anybody who's listening today and is scared to ask someone to hang out who they think is really cool that, hey, they actually might be a lot more likely to be open to it than you think, particularly at a time like now when so many of us have lost friends in the pandemic and are even more open to wanting to connect with you.

I wanted to ask you, because I know I've had this thought, as much as I might like talking to someone, I don't necessarily want to be their friend. I mean, I've had that situation. I've been at events or parties or whatever, and it's great talking to the person, but I don't see them as friend material for me, even though it's perfectly fine and pleasant right now. It's going to stop right here.

Yeah, and that's real. I think when you're making friends, inevitably you face the risk of rejection, right? And I see rejection as a friendship expert. I really see rejection as a good thing because if you're curating the life that you really want, if you're going for the people that you really want to be part of your social network, inevitably rejection is a consolation prize for that. So if you're getting rejected,

that means you're initiating. That means you're going for the people that you really want relationship with. That means you're really curating your life. So at the end of the day, like if you're building the skill of initiating, if you're putting yourself out there, if you're living up to your values, I see it as a success, even if the outcome isn't what you hoped for.

Well, for anyone who wants to understand how friendship works and how to make friendship work, this really has been a great conversation. Marissa Franco has been my guest. She is a friendship expert whose work has appeared in Psychology Today, Scientific American, and the New York Times. And she's author of the book, Platonic, How the Science of Attachment Can Make and Keep Friends.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Marissa. Thank you so much for having me, Mike. Looking forward to listening to the episode. Anyone who has tried knows it's hard to lose weight. Yet if you are overweight, losing weight is critical for your health, longevity, and just how you feel about yourself.

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If you're listening to this podcast, you most likely speak at least some English. And English is a tricky language.

There are a lot of rules, and sometimes the rules contradict other rules, and then there's pronunciation and punctuation that doesn't always seem to make sense. And English is, in some ways, more than one language. American English is different than British English in many ways.

So to help us understand and use the language better is Ellen Jovan. She holds degrees from Harvard and UCLA, and she has studied 25 languages. She's author of a book called Rebel Without a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian. Hey Ellen, hi, welcome. Thank you, Mike. I'm so happy to be here. So I've heard, we've all heard that English is a complicated language. Why is it so complicated?

One of the complications with English is that there is just a ton of variety. That's what you get with a global language, many different dialects spoken by people who don't actually always have contact with one another. And it's one of the things that I find exciting and adventurous about the English language.

So here's an example of a question I think a lot of people have. We have two words, further and farther. And farther technically refers to physical distance. You went farther. You didn't go further. You walked farther. But does it really matter? Further and farther is an interesting one for me because I ran into a person in Maryland when I was younger.

sitting at my pop-up traveling grammar advice stand and she was very angry about that. She didn't like that people said "further" when they meant

for distance, for physical distance. She wanted them to use farther. And so that was an example for her of a nails on the chalkboard kind of thing. The reality for me, I definitely do not care about that one. And in fact, if you go look it up, you can see that further is used often and has been historically for both physical distances and for metaphorical distances. Like, for example, I went further down the block

I investigated the matter further. I could do both of those, even though the sense is slightly different, but some purists will insist on using farther for anything where you can kind of measure it with a ruler.

Same thing for lie down or lay down. It's hard to always remember what's right. And again, does it really matter? Yeah, there's a lot of discussion about that. I talk to an awful lot of people about lie down and lay down. And in a lot of people's sort of natural dialects they grew up speaking, they just use lay down in cases where I, for example, would use lie down. I need to lay down for a bit.

There I would say lie down. They're both words that begin with L. They're short. They sound the same. You use to lay when you have an object. He should lay that down on the picnic table versus he should lie down. So the one with lay has an object, a thing right after it that is being acted upon. In casual speech, even very sophisticated words.

people, actually not just casual speech writing to very, very sophisticated people often can't remember the difference. And, you know, I've met plenty of advocates for just, oh, just get rid of it. Let's just have it be one word so we can stop worrying about it.

I think people who are interested in this topic, everybody has like their, at least one little thing that they're a stickler about. And one that I hear a lot is like when you say, how are you? And some people say, I'm good. And other people say, no, no, no, no, you're well, you're not good. What say you? Yeah.

I actually have trouble with this because I was raised as a, you know, to say I am well, you're supposed to say well, because that says that tells about your, your health, your wellbeing, that kind of thing. Whereas if you say I'm good, it's like proclaiming that you're morally good. So that was a big deal when I was a kid. It just doesn't really match up without with how people use these things though. I think now I am well,

can sound pedantic to a lot of people, especially in the younger half of the population. So I often reply with things like, "I'm doing well," or, "I'm fine, thanks. How are you?" So I kind of avoid the different, you know, choosing between those. I can't say, because of my childhood, I just can't say, "I'm good." It just doesn't feel comfortable for me because I would feel as though it's an error.

What about punctuation? People get so confused about punctuation. For example, I can't remember the last time I used a semicolon because I don't really know when to use it.

I don't think that there is a daily minimum requirement for semicolons. I do use them. I'm kind of attached to the semicolon. And in fact, I sometimes look over my email before I send, when I look over my email before I send it, I sometimes have to take out a semicolon or two because I can go a little bit crazy. I'll even use a semicolon in a tweet.

But the most common place for them is between what could be two complete sentences. So in a place where you could put a period, but you want to bring them more closely together, they're related ideas and you want, you just want the pause between them to be less stark and

so that people connect them more in their brains. And there can be a certain kind of quiet suspense to the semicolon, I think. I like it. I never looked at it that way. Versus the colon, which I think has a more structured use, right? Colons are funny because most often in normal daily life, the way people would use them is in front of a list of

and not in front of all lists. For example, I might say, she ordered three items, desks, and what should my third one be? Ping pong tables, you know, the usual list. So on the left of that colon, you have three items. And on the right of the colon, you have the three items, there's almost like an equivalency happening there. You can also do that kind of thing when you have

This is a more, I think, literary use and people should be cautious about this, but sometimes you'll see a sentence, colon, and then another sentence. And often it's kind of a ta-da, this is a big deal. Like I'm setting this up for you. Here we are, we're arriving at this dramatic second piece. But I don't recommend people play around with that too much unless they read and get a sense of

how experienced authors are doing it it's mostly a more banal list kind of thing it's sometimes there's an apostrophe in there and sometimes there's not and I think I overuse the apostrophe so what's what's the rule do we need to put you on an apostrophe diet apparently apparently so

Well, what's confusing about it's with the apostrophe is that usually when we think apostrophe, well, in many cases, we think possessive. Like if I say Mary's chair, it would be Mary apostrophe S chair, the chair of Mary.

These possessive forms of pronouns, that's what you have with it or hers or theirs or ours. With those, there are no apostrophes and the it's works similarly. Like its tail was wagging, no apostrophe. So in that case, if you have an apostrophe and then it's, it's going to, it's,

See there, right that second, I just used one. It's going to be a contraction. So either for it is or it has. So here, I'll give you two examples. It's raining, I-T apostrophe S, raining, or it's been a long time since we last spoke. It has been a long time since we last spoke. Both apostrophes, its tail was wagging, no apostrophe at all.

You have an example in the book. Is it, I saw a UFO, or I saw an UFO, because UFO begins with a U, but nobody says an UFO.

That's a funny example. In standard English, people typically will use an before a word beginning with a vowel, and they'll use a before a word beginning with a consonant. So the a versus an UFO example I included here.

Because often, this is for the overthinkers though. This is for the overthinkers among us. Because I've seen people look at something like UFO, which literally on the page in writing begins with what we think of as a vowel. But the issue is not how it's spelled. The issue is how you say it. And when you say UFO, if you think about it, how do you pronounce the letter, when you say the letter U, UFO?

It has a Y sound at the beginning, yuh, you, and that therefore requires a vowel in front. So a UFO. So you pick one of these that you find interesting or people ask you a lot about.

Okay, I have a good one for you. People often ask me about sentences concluding in prepositions. And a preposition is one of these relationship words. Like if you think of a desk, here are some prepositions. Over the desk, under the desk, near the desk, for the desk. So these are little relationship words. And a lot of people, I'm including myself among those people, were taught when we were kids that we should not end with a preposition.

So, you know, in the sentence, that's the woman I was telling you about. Some people will interrupt themselves mid-conversation or they'll rewrite their email so that it says something like, that is the woman about which I was telling you. And it sounds very stilted.

It's not a particularly natural structure for most of us. It doesn't really coincide with how we speak. But people will remember, oh, Miss Smith in eighth grade English taught me that, so I'm going to rearrange my sentence. And I have to...

that's probably the one thing when I tell people that actually you can end with a preposition, if it feels appropriate and more natural to you. I mean, you don't need to seek it out every opportunity you get because some of them can be awkward in their own way, but often it's the best way to do things. And you should get rid of that superstition from your childhood English classes and move along and get with the English program, which allows you to do that.

Let me see if I can think of an example. Oh, yeah. So here's an example of something that confuses me sometimes. I saw this couple. They were nice. Well, it's a couple and then it's they. So something's not right there. Ha ha ha.

You are really getting right to the tough ones here. So a couple is what is known as a collective noun. It has a singular form. This is what it means. It has a singular form that refers to multiple entities. And people struggle so much with what to do

Especially with verbs that go with the word couple. So, yes, no one's going to say, what was your sentence? I saw a couple. No one's going to say, I saw a couple. It was nice. Right? You can't do that. You can't refer, even though it's singular, you can't say, it was nice. You have to say they. So there is a schism between the singular form.

of couple and then what you want to do with it later. Now, I would do what you did. I would switch to they, where this causes confusion mostly because most people just put they and not even think about it, but people argue about the verbs that go with couple. Would you say, let's see, the couple, that nice young couple is moving in next door, that nice young couple are moving in next door.

A lot of Americans will say is automatically, and I probably would in that case too. But there's language variety. If you cross the Atlantic and you're in the UK, you're going to be more likely to hear nouns like that used with plural verbs. That nice young couple are moving in next door.

Well, as you say, there are a lot of influences on language, and those influences eventually make changes in the language, and then there are people who are kind of holding the line, saying, well, those changes are not proper English.

But eventually they become proper English. Absolutely. There's always going to be a tension between generations. So we grow up, we have our own slang, we speak in a certain way, we're used to certain things, there are educational trends that affect how we're taught, and we grow

We grow up and then things evolve. You know, young people don't want the slang of the generation above them. They want their own. They have their own way of speaking. And there are always going to be little gaps demographically between different groups. I think it's actually really interesting and fun. And it's something that for me keeps English being an adventure, right?

And what I love, what fascinates me about slang, not that I know much about it, is how the word cool has transcended everything. Cool has been cool forever.

It does seem to have enduring power. I used that when I was a teenager and I still use it. Isn't that amazing that that one word, there's no other slang word, well, it's not even slang anymore, but there's no other slang word that has lasted as long as that. I can't personally verify that, but it is one of the...

Well, here's the thing. A lot of times I think it's important to recognize our own limitations and knowing what our usage actually is. This happens to me a lot. Someone will say to me, I never do X, Y, Z. Like on Twitter, what's interesting about Twitter, someone will say, I never use X, Y, Z in this way. But then, not that I do this a lot, but I have done it. You can use the Twitter feature to

to find an example instantly in their own tweets that contradicts what they just said. So people think they know what they do, and some are very self-aware and are probably pretty well informed about what they do, but others just think they know what they're doing because they remember what they were told in school and they think they're following it, but they're not necessarily. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think in analyzing our own language use, we need to remember that

Those words that are tumbling out of us every single day, all day long for some of us, we don't always know exactly what we just said. There are times in English where you say or read a sentence where the word is repeated, like he had had enough. Is that correct? Yes.

Yes, I love examples like that. I think they're fun. So in he had had enough, you have for people who like the technical names, that is an example of past perfect. So you have a form of the verb to have first that's used across all perfect verbs.

verb combinations. For example, I have eaten the cheese is present perfect. I had eaten the cheese is past perfect. I will have eaten the cheese is future perfect. And when you do had had, what you have is the past perfect of the verb to have. So

In that case, you have to use have for the first form because that's just how it works, a form of have, in this case had. And then you end up with another had because that's just how it goes. So I had had too much to eat when dessert arrived. So here's something that happens when you write a sentence that contains a list. Like if I were to write, I got my coat...

Hat and gloves. That's the sentence. I got my coat, hat, and gloves. I would put a comma after my coat, comma, hat, and gloves. But Microsoft Word, and I imagine other word processing programs, tell you that there should be a comma after hat. It should be my coat, comma, hat, comma, and gloves. I don't typically do that. Who's right?

It's not wrong to leave the comma out. It's not wrong to put it in. So this is an example of one of those gray areas. The comma before the and, which is known as the Oxford comma, the serial comma, or the series comma, depending on where and when you learned about it.

is one of the biggest obsessions grammatically of Americans I have found. I get asked about it constantly. I put it in these days, but when I worked as a freelance reporter and I was following associated press style, I usually left it out. So it really doesn't matter that much unless you have a situation where the list is complicated. For example, if there's an and

In one of the items on the list, it's better to go comma heavy so people can tell where the boundaries are between items. Is there anything else that people ask you a lot that they're confused about when they're writing or speaking English? I get asked a lot about boundaries.

and effect. So is it A-F-F-E-C-T or do you write the word beginning with initial E? E-F-F-E-C-T. And so usually the one with the E is a noun and the one with an A is a verb. So you

If your behavior affects me, that would be an A. Your behavior has an effect on me would be an E. Those are the most common differences. There are some specialized instances for each, but that covers the bulk of cases that people will encounter.

Well, I always enjoy talking about how the language works because everyone has questions about it. They're confused about things. And it's always good to get some clarification on a lot of the most common ones. My guest has been Ellen Joven. She is a grammar expert and author of the book Rebel Without a Clause, Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Ellen. Thanks for being here. Well, I love grammar and I'm always happy to speak about it. Thank you for having me on.

How many times do you chew your food? Well, if you were to count, you would want to count 21 times per bite. That's the number of times the average lean person chews, according to a study. The average obese person chews only 17 times per bite.

You've probably heard that chewing more can result in weighing less, and apparently it's true. Dr. Sharon Wang, author of the study, says the act of chewing releases hormones that tell the brain when to stop eating and will eventually start to suppress the appetite.

So chewing your food more can help you weigh less. And that is something you should know. Reviews are always helpful because it helps us with the rankings, but it also helps us know what people think. So please leave a review for our podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Ladies and gentlemen. What are you doing? What do you mean?

Just keep it simple. I'm making the promo. Just keep it simple. Just say, hey, we're the Brav Bros. Two guys that talk about Bravo. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we're the Brav Bros. No. Dude, stop with the voice. Just keep it simple. I've seen promos on TV, dude. This is how you get the fans engaged. This is how you get listeners. We're trying to get listeners here. If we just say, oh, we're two dudes that talk about Bravo, people are going to get tired of it already. We need some oomph. All right, then fine. Let's try to do it with your voice.

Bravo, bros. Good job. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.