As a memento of my visit to the London offices of The Economist I took away a printed copy of the 2013 edition of the magazine’s style book. Its 200 sides of heavy, high-gloss paper are spiral-bound ...

You don’t have to be a language maven to find the direct object in a basic English-language sentence. Just look next to the verb. Take a simple sentence: “I gave a book to Mary.” In this case the verb ...

When a sentence uses a transitive verb to describe an action, it’s necessary for the subject to take a direct object and to act on it: “The woman spurned her suitor last week.” ...

The Local's French grammar tips. Image: Patick Fore_Meizhi Lang via Unsplash Differentiation between COD (direct object) and COI (indirect object) can be tedious, but once you've understood the basic ...