READING a story on the fate of European newspapers, your columnist was drowning in bad news—newsrooms decimated, advertisers fleeing—but then a strange sentence appeared: Even Rupert Murdoch, who ...

First there was President Clinton's defense during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which he raised the issue of the meaning of "is." Now we have the "hortatory subjunctive" defense. In trying to ...

The subjunctive actually acts in several other baffling ways in addition to this deviant behavior, thus making its usage even more confusing to many people. To increase our confidence in using the ...