'I.e.' versus 'e.g.' What Shakespeare actually added to English. Four schnitzels.
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The kids are still at practice, and I have no idea what's for dinner. You can get a rotisserie chicken and two sides for just $15 in as fast as an hour with Walmart Express delivery. Who said that? Who's in my house? Don't play with me because I'm not the one. It's just your friendly Walmart announcer. This is a commercial. Okay. You were saying dinner for a family was just $15? Yep. It'll be at your door by the time you get the kids home from practice.

Order now. Welcome to your Walmart. Subject to availability restrictions and fees apply. Now that was a helpful commercial. Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about those pesky abbreviations IE and EG. They don't mean the same thing. And then we're going to have some fun talking about Shakespeare's contributions to the English language. And listen all the way to the end for a special treat this week.

But first, I have a pronunciation correction from last week. The term mad money first appeared in an Ohio newspaper in Lima, Ohio, not Lima, Ohio. Thanks to everyone who called or wrote, and my apologies to the people of Lima.

Misusing the abbreviations IE and EG was one of the top mistakes I used to see when I edited technical documents. There's so much confusion that in some of the drafts I got back from clients, they had actually crossed out the right abbreviation and replaced it with the wrong one. And I just had to laugh and fix it. So IE and EG are both abbreviations for Latin terms.

IE stands for id est and means roughly that is. EG stands for exempli gratia, which means for example. Great, Latin. You're probably thinking, how am I supposed to remember that? Well, by now, you probably know I'm not going to ask you to remember Latin. I'm going to give you a memory trick. So here's how I remember the difference.

Forget about IE standing for that is or whatever it really means in Latin. From now on, IE, which starts with I, means in other words. And EG, which starts with E, means for example. I equals in other words. E equals example.

Now, a few listeners have also written in to say that they remember the difference between IE and EG by imagining that IE means in essence, and EG, egg, sounds like egg sample. And those are good memory tricks too. So now that you have a few tricks for remembering what the abbreviations mean, let's think about how to use them in a sentence. EG means for example. So you use it to introduce an example.

I like card games, EG, Bridge, and Crazy Eights. Now, because I used EG, you know I've given you a list of examples of card games I like. It's not a finite list of all card games I like. It's just a few examples. On the other hand, IE means in other words, so you use it to introduce a further clarification. I like to play cards, IE, Bridge, and Crazy Eights.

Because I used IE, which introduces a clarification, you know that these are the only card games I like. And as an aside, you don't capitalize the names of old-time card games like that. Poker and Rummy are also lowercase. If you're writing about a game that's a brand name like Uno or Magic the Gathering, those are capitalized because they're names, proper nouns.

But back to IE and EG, here are two more examples. First, Squiggly has always had big dogs as pets, EG, Bullmastiffs, and Great Danes. The words following EG are examples, so you know that these are just some of the big dogs Squiggly has had as pets. Now compare that to this. Squiggly has always had big dogs as pets, IE, Bullmastiffs, and Great Danes.

The words following IE provide clarification. They tell you the names of the only big dogs Squiggly has had as pets. Now, an important point is that if I've failed and you're still confused about when to use each abbreviation, you can always just write out the words, for example, or in other words. There's no rule that says you have to use the abbreviations.

Next, if you're wondering how to write these abbreviations, don't italicize IE and EG. Even though they're abbreviations for Latin words, they've been used for so long that they're considered a standard part of the English language. And remember that they are abbreviations, so there's always a period after each letter. Also, I always put a comma after IE and EG,

I've noticed that my spell checker always freaks out and wants me to remove the comma, but six out of seven style guides recommend the comma. Seriously, I got so engrossed in the question of whether a comma is required after IE and EG that I made a table for the website summarizing the opinions of seven different style guides.

For what it's worth, I've also been told that commas are used less frequently in British English. And the only style guide I found that advised against commas was Fowler's Modern English Usage, which has its roots in British English. The bottom line is that in American English, I recommend using a comma after IE and EG.

Finally, I tend to reserve IE and EG to introduce parenthetical statements, but it's also perfectly fine to use them in other ways.

You can put a comma before them, or if you use them to introduce a main clause that follows another main clause, you can put a semicolon before them. You can even put an em dash before I-E-N-E-G if you're using them to introduce something dramatic. They're just abbreviations for words, so you can use them in any way you'd use the words in essence or for example.

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The kids are still at practice, and I have no idea what's for dinner. You can get a rotisserie chicken and two sides for just $15 in as fast as an hour with Walmart Express delivery. Who said that? Who's in my house? Don't play with me because I'm not the one. It's just your friendly Walmart announcer. This is a commercial. Okay. You were saying dinner for a family was just $15? Yep. It'll be at your door by the time you get the kids home from practice.

Order now. Welcome to your Walmart. Subject to availability restrictions and fees apply. Now that was a helpful commercial. Next, I have a piece with five myths about Shakespeare's contributions to the English language. Because this week is Shakespeare's birthday. He was born on April 23rd in 1564. And strangely, it's also the anniversary of his death in 1616 at the age of 52.

Although the date of his birth is a little fuzzy, records only show that he was baptized on April 26th, which usually happened a few days after birth back then. People often do say he was born and died on the same date because it makes for a fun piece of trivia. And this piece is by Jonathan Culpepper and Matthew Gillings.

Shakespeare's language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English. But that status is underpinned by multiple myths, ideas about language that have departed from reality, or what is even plausible. Those myths send us down rabbit holes and make us lose sight of what's truly impressive about Shakespeare, what he did with his words.

The Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's Language project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare's language. Here, incorporating some of its findings, we revisit five things you probably thought you knew about Shakespeare but are actually untrue.

Number one, Shakespeare coined a vast number of words. Well, he did, but not as many as people think. Even reputable sources assume more than a thousand. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust puts it at 1,700, but carefully add that this number concerns words whose earliest appearance is in Shakespeare's works.

For example, the word hobnail first appears in a text attributed to Shakespeare, but it's difficult to imagine it arose from a creative poetic act. More likely, it was around in the spoken language of the time, and Shakespeare's use is the earliest recording of it.

Estimates of just how many words Shakespeare supposedly coined don't usually distinguish between what was creatively coined by him and what was first recorded in a written document attributed to him. Even if you don't make that distinction and include all the words that appear first in a work attributed to Shakespeare, whether coined or recorded, numbers are grossly inflated.

Working with the literature and linguistics academics Jonathan Hope and Sam Hollins, we've been using computers to search millions of words in texts predating Shakespeare. With this method, we found that only around 500 words do seem to first appear in Shakespeare. Of course, 500 is still huge, and most writers neither coin a new word nor produce a first recording. Myth number two, Shakespeare is the English language.

The myth that Shakespeare coined loads of words has partly fueled the myth that Shakespeare's language constitutes one quarter, a half, or even all of the words in today's English language. The number of different words in Shakespeare's texts is around 21,000 words. Some of those words are repeated, which is how we get to the total number of around a million words in works attributed to Shakespeare.

To illustrate, the previous sentence contains 26 words in total, but of, words, and to are repeated, so the number of different words is 22. The Oxford English Dictionary has around 600,000 different words in it, but many are obscure technical terms, so let's round down to 500,000.

Even if every word within Shakespeare had been coined by him, which is of course not the case, as we already said, that would still be only 4.2% of today's English language. So Shakespeare could only ever have contributed a very small fraction, though quite possibly more than most writers. Myth number three, Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary.

Ludicrously, popular claims about Shakespeare's huge vocabulary seem to be driven by the fact that his writings as a whole contain a large number of different words, as we said, around 21,000. But the more you write, the more opportunities you have to use more words that are different. This means Shakespeare's likely to come out on top of any speculations about vocabulary size, simply because he has an exceptionally large surviving body of work.

A few researchers have used other methods to make better guesses. There are always guesses, as you can't count the words in somebody's mind. For example, Hugh Craig, a Shakespearean scholar who's pioneered the use of computers for analyzing language in literature, looked at the average number of different words used across samples of writing of the same length.

He found that relative to his contemporaries, the average frequency with which different words appear in Shakespeare's work is distinctly average. Myth number four, Shakespeare has universal meaning.

Sure, some themes or aspects of the human condition are universal, but let's not get carried away and say that his language is universal. The mantra of the historical linguist is that all language changes, and Shakespeare isn't exempt. Changes can be subtle and easily missed. Take the word time. Surely a universal word denoting a universal concept? Well, no.

For each word in Shakespeare, we used computers to identify the other words they associate it with, and those associations reveal the meanings of words. Time, for instance, often occurs with day or night. For example, from Hamlet, "'What art thou that usurpest this time of night?'

This reflects the understanding of time in the early modern world, roughly 1450 to 1750, which was more closely linked to the cycles of the moon and sun, and thus the broader forces of the cosmos. In contrast, today, associated words like waste, consume, and spend suggest that time is more frequently thought of as a precious resource under human control.

And myth number five, Shakespeare didn't know much Latin. The myths above are popular myths spread by academics and non-academics alike, which is why they're easy to find on the internet. But myths can also be more restricted. Within some theatrical circles, the idea that Shakespeare didn't know much Latin emerged. Indeed, the contemporary playwright Ben Johnson famously wrote that Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek.

Shakespeare lacked a university education. University-educated, jealous, snooty playwrights might have been keen to take him down a peg. Working with the Latin scholar Caterina Gardamanga, we found that Shakespeare used 245 different Latin words, whereas in a matching set of plays by other playwrights, there were just 28, opposite of what the myth dictates.

That Shakespeare used so much Latin without a university education makes his achievement in using it all the greater. That segment was by Jonathan Culpepper, a chair professor in English language and linguistics at Lancaster University, and Matthew Gillings, an assistant professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. It originally appeared in The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license. And next, here's today's familect.

Hi Grammar Girl, this is long-time listener Amir from London and I wanted to share a fun family my partner and I use. When we want to express strong agreement with something, instead of saying for sure, we often exclaim four schnitzels.

Obviously, we're paraphrasing Snoop Dogg's four shizzle, but we've now also started increasing the number of schnitzels depending on the level of enthusiasm. So if we strongly agree, we might say four schnitzels. But if we're being emphatic, we might say 400 schnitzels. And in case of absolute agreement, we might say, oh, four million schnitzels. Love your show. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. I love it.

If you want to share the story of your familect, a word or phrase that you use only with your friends or family, leave a message on the voicemail line at 83-321-4GIRL or leave a voice message on WhatsApp. And if you want that number or link later, you can always find them in the show notes. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast, and we have lots of other shows. This week, the Modern Mentor podcast has tips to fix a fractured relationship in the workplace. Check it out.

Thanks to Nat Hoops in marketing, Dan Fireobb in audio, Brandon Goetjes, director of podcasts, Morgan Christensen in advertising, and Holly Hutchings in digital operations, who just started Reformer Pilates. And finally, I have a song again this week to go with the familect, again written and performed by the wonderful Lex Friedman, who also actually has a new album out called Blueprint that he did with his son Liam that has songs about roller coasters, robots, pizza, and more.

I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip of day book, The Grammar Daily. That's all. Thanks for listening.

Faux shizzle is a phrase that Snoop Dogg made famous, it obviously means for sure. So now when we want to show our agreement, we gotta multiply it by four. Also to shizzle becomes schnitzel, you'd be chicken not to appreciate it. So now the way we choose to say it is kind of fun, so let's celebrate it.

For schnitzels when we strongly concur. For hungry schnitzels if it's true for sure. For new schnitzels when there are total agreements. That's what the family we use represents. For schnitzels.

We think the phrase is fun to say And we encourage everyone to use it If you agree, say it with me Let's all reintroduce it Four schnitzels if you strongly concur Four hundred schnitzels if it's true for sure One million schnitzels if you're in total agreement That's what we use the schnitzel to represent Give this on the wait and review

Give this podcast a rating too. We're asking for five stars. For four schnitzels. Four schnitzels. We're asking for four schnitzels. Four schnitzels.

The kids are still at practice, and I have no idea what's for dinner. You can get a rotisserie chicken and two sides for just $15 in as fast as an hour with Walmart Express delivery. Who said that? Who's in my house? Don't play with me because I'm not the one. It's just your friendly Walmart announcer. This is a commercial. Okay. You were saying dinner for a family was just $15? Yep. It'll be at your door by the time you get the kids home from practice.

Order now. Welcome to your Walmart. Subject to availability restrictions and fees apply. Now that was a helpful commercial.