Group items tagged

The Chicago Manual of Style prescribes spelling out United States as a noun in running text and reserving US for the adjective form only. CMOS also prefers US without periods, to match the US postal codes like AR, MI, and WY.

The AP Stylebook recognizes U. S. as a noun as well as an adjective. It calls for periods when the U.S. appears in a running text, but US without periods in a headline.

The predicate nominative and predicate adjective complete the meaning of a state-of-being or linking verb. The most common linking verb is to be, with its forms am, is, are, was, were, being, been. Other verbs, like seem and appear, also function in this way.

Some speakers have trouble with nouns that end in -ful, puzzling, for example, between cupfuls and cupsful. This is a case in which common sense should probably advise against consulting M-W. Although the M-W entries for cupful, handful, and armful list the plurals cupfuls, handfuls, and armfuls first, they give cupsful, handsful, and armsful as alternative spellings. In addition, the spelling handfull is in there as an “also.” My American spellchecker does not countenance any of these alternatives. Cupsful doesn’t cut it because compound nouns are made up of two or more words that can be used on their own. For example, the words in the compound policeman can be used separately: “The man called for the police.” The element ful in cupful is not a word; it’s a suffix. Common sense tells me that cupsful is incorrect.