Hi Sars,
I have a friend, who I’ll call R., and R. has a friend who I’ll call Fuckface. R. is a pretty good guy, but Fuckface is quite racist.
I’ve often told R. that I can’t …

Dear Sars,
After three and a half years of a mostly great relationship, I invited my boyfriend to move in. I truly believe I was cool about it, didn’t make any ultimatums, was generally good-natured about …

Dear Sars,
After long pining for it, I received Garner’s Modern American Usage for my birthday. In the entry on pronunciation, he claims that “almond” should be pronounced without the L. What is he smoking?
Confusedly,
Language Nerd …

Dear Sars,
My boyfriend of five months is currently traveling solo through Southeast Asia, and although he’s already been gone for over three weeks (and is almost halfway through his trip), he has yet to …

So, picture this: You’re a 27-year-old woman, you’re a young professional finishing up grad school and you have recently become engaged to your boyfriend of seven years. You live with this boyfriend, boyfriend has been …

Hi Sars,
It’s really kind of embarrassing that I have to ask this question — I go to an Ivy League university and while browsing the library page today I noticed the following:
“On this day… …

Reader Alexis had this to add re: the Vine letter of March 4:
 

The case of “hard to underestimate” that you discussed in The Vine recently was investigated on the linguistics blog Language Log in 2004: …

I have a usage question that occurred to me while listening to NPR recently. There was a piece full of praise for a person who has done a lot of good. The anchor used a …

My boss (who is a judge, by the way, thus the legalese) says that the following sentence is correct:
 
“A conclusion that none of Plaintiff’s damages was caused by the fall is not reasonable, so …

1. Something that is built haphazardly/slapped together/makeshift is:

a) jury-rigged; b) jerry-rigged

Both appear in the 11c; “jury-rigged” is the older construction. Which do you use?
2. Something that is built hastily/built poorly/looks cheap is:

a) …