Usage and Grammar

Q. It has come to my attention, over the last few years, that people are now using the phrase “different than” instead of “different from.” Please warn your readers against this gross misuse of the English language!

Q. I have often disliked authors in the habit of introducing a statement with Firstly or Secondly, and so on. Are there any good rules on this or should it be banished from usage?

Q. When writing about an author’s work, do you write in the past or present tense? Example: The author argues (argued) that it was the correct choice. Please help. Thanks.

Q. I hope that you can settle a minor dispute between a colleague and me. In a journal article that we are writing, we have a passage similar in syntax to the following: “I don’t like animals. An exception is cats, which are warm and furry.” The dispute is over the verb in the first clause in the second sentence, “An exception is cats . . .” My colleague believes that the verb in this clause should be plural, “are,” since the subject is the plural noun “cats.” It isn’t clear to me that the subject in the sentence is “cats.” Who is correct?

Q. What is the rule about using a product or company name that implies the type of product to avoid redundant words, for example, Fred’s Bakery bakery products are the best in town? What is the justification for not including the adjective for products (bakery)?

Q. Is the word “not” subject to the “neither . . . nor” rule? As in: “I will not be angry nor upset if you don’t attend my party.”

Q. The word “whose” used as a possessive with an inanimate object never sounds correct to me. Example: She had changed into a long green dress whose very modesty highlighted a long lean body. The modesty refers to the green dress. Is it correct to say it this way? I always thought “whose” referred to a person.

Q. In reading a marketing piece written by a co-worker, I thought that the following sentence contained a possessive pronoun that disagrees in number with its antecedent: “We tailor each client’s portfolio to meet their investment objectives.” Personally, I think “their” should be “his,” “his/her,” or “its” because “each client” is singular. Another approach, in my opinion, would be to make the entire sentence plural, i.e., “We tailor our clients’ portfolios to meet their investment objectives.” However, that construction loses some of the connotation that each portfolio is individually constructed for each client. Please help!

Q. Do I need “the” before “hoi polloi”? I know that hoi means “the” in Greek, so a second “the” would seem redundant.

Q. I am editing a work of historical fiction set in the 1950s in Texas. The author is writing about segregation and racism. She wants to use the language of the times, but I just don’t feel comfortable having so many uses of “ni——s” in the text. (The word is currently spelled out in the text; I’ve redacted it here.) I have advised her that these terms are considered highly offensive by today’s standards and should be used rarely. Instead, she added the term in more places. Any suggestions on how to handle using these terms? Should I use something like the above? Put them in quotations? Italics?