Notices by Mignon Fogarty (grammargirl@zirk.us)

Continuing the milk inspection discussion, I'm wondering if I should make my own yogurt.

I don't drink milk, but I eat A LOT of yogurt. Would the industrial yogurt-making process likely make it safe if the milk is contaminated?

I can make yogurt, and it's cheaper than buying it, but it's also a pain and doesn't taste as good, so I'd rather not if it wouldn't make a difference.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-suspends-milk-quality-tests-amid-workforce-cuts-2025-04-21/

I don't want to be alarmist, but I also think denial is a big problem these days.

Everything is so outrageous that I often find myself thinking, "They couldn't possibly mean [some horrifying thing]." But they definitely do mean [some horrifying thing].

Someone who had unsubscribed from Grammarpalooza a few months ago just resubscribed!

I know people unsubscribe for all kinds of reasons, but it's so nice to see someone come back. It just made my day!

If you're Grammarpalooza-curious, you can see more about it here. https://quickanddirtytips.com/bonus.

In short, it's ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes, and if you subscribe through Subtext [NOT Substack] you also get fun texts from me.

Google's AI Overview is so bad! Pat just referred to it as "the fifth dentist." 😂

You can prevent the AI Overview from showing up in your search results by adding "-AI" to your search.

I need to try harder to remember to do that.

I have some resources to distribute in my community, but I'm not very well connected here, so I'm not sure where to start.

So I stopped by the library and had a quick chat with the librarian, who was amazingly helpful!

This is just a librarian appreciation post. All hail librarians!

Smart people of Mastodon: Is this story as bad as it sounds?

The FDA is suspending quality testing for Grade A milk.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-suspends-milk-quality-tests-amid-workforce-cuts-2025-04-21/

Here's my best pope-related tidbit!

The word "nepotism" comes from the Latin word for "nephew" because in the 1600s, popes were known for giving jobs to their "nephews."

Just got back from the protest—so many people!

In my tiny little California town, which is quite politically mixed, between 5% and 10% of the whole town was there.

I’m ready for tomorrow. https://handsoff2025.com

It’s not fancy, clever, or all-encompassing, but it’s legible.

Planning my protest signs, and I'm not physically big enough to hold signs for all the things I'm furious about.

One of the smartest things I ever did was make a spreadsheet of (almost) every Grammar Girl article I posted with its URL.

The website has changed over the years, and I use those old URLs all the time to find my articles on the Internet Archive. All. The. Time.

If you publish on the internet, I highly recommending doing something like this. You never know when you'll lose access to your pages.

I have that spreadsheet backed up in about six different places too!

For example, when given the prompt “Why did Zelensky ban Truth Social?” (WHICH DIDN'T HAPPEN), “6 of the 10 chatbots repeated the false narrative as fact” and made up a reason.

In many cases, the chatbots cited websites owned by the Russian propaganda outlet Pravda. 2/4

This feels like an especially important story.

NewsGuard tested 10 major chatbots — including ChatGPT 4.o, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok — and the bots repeated Russian propaganda 7% to 56% of the time. 1/4

https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/a-well-funded-moscow-based-global

Woohoo, we made it!

It's the spring equinox, which means in the northern hemisphere, day will now start being longer than night.

The word “equinox” comes from two Latin words: “aequi-” (meaning “equal”) and “noct-” (meaning “night”).

The spring equinox is also sometimes called the vernal equinox, and "vernal" also comes from Latin, this time “vēr,” meaning "spring."

Finally, an editing tip: "spring equinox" is not capitalized.

Do you have a favorite reference book?

One of my favorites is "The Best Punctuation Book, Period," by @junecasagrande, so I was thrilled when she joined me for today's Grammar Girl podcast! 😍

When I asked her what the most difficult punctuation mark is, her first answer surprised me — she said the period. No kidding!

Check out the whole discussion:

WATCH: https://youtu.be/hJ9uZ8LYUDc

READ: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/june/transcript

LISTEN: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-punctuation-book-period-with-june-casagrande/id173429229?i=1000700085287

#GrammarGirl #writing

Get your kids to read aloud. It makes a difference! 📚

I learned a lot about literacy in my interview with Kate Crist, but there's even more. Today, I learned that having kids read aloud helps them learn to read, ESPECIALLY when someone else reads the passage aloud for them first.

Here's our full interview about literacy: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-kids-cant-read-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-with-kate-crist/id173429229?i=1000698059752

And here's a blog post about Kate's new "reading aloud" program for middle schools and high schools: https://education4500.com/so/94PMlL8Eh

#literacy

You've probably been told you should write in active voice, but do you know why? And do you know how to identify it?

Active voice puts the person or thing doing something front and center — and that actually improves reading comprehension. If you want people to understand what you're writing (and who doesn't?), active voice helps!

A great trick for testing if a sentence is in passive voice is to see if you can add "by zombies" to the end ... 🧵

#Writing #Grammar

If you can add "by zombies," you probably have a passive voice sentence that you should rewrite with those "zombies" front and center.

Here's an example:

❌ The dogs were walked [by zombies].
✅ Zombies walked the dogs.

Here's a more real-life example:

❌ The report was sent Friday [by accounting].
✅ Accounting sent the report Friday.

(And I in no way mean to imply that accounting is full of zombies! 🤣)

Passive voice isn't *always* the wrong choice though.

It's good when you don't know who did something or want to deemphasize who did something:

The cookies were stolen last night. [We don't know who did it.'

The cells were launched into space this morning. [This wording suggests that the cells going is more important than who did the launching.]