Grammar Girl here, today's topic is drag versus drug.

I've been renovating a condo, and last week I posted a message on Twitter that started

out with the sentence, I drug myself over to the condo.

I was sharing this bit of information to get to the next part of the story, which was

that I was so happy to see drywall installed I thought I would cry.

But that bit of joy was lost because I'd used the wrong word in my sentence, and people

kindly let me know.

That's one danger of sending text messages when you're exhausted, at least it is when

you're grammar girl.

I might not have been so careless if I wasn't dissolving into tears over drywall, but

the truth is I actually thought it was okay to use the word drug that way.

The whole experience was instructive because I learned that I'm not the only one who's

confused about drag versus drug.

First, let me be clear, the correct form of the word is dragged.

I should have said I dragged myself over to the condo.

Drag is a regular verb, which means you add D, E, D, or in this case, G-E-D to the end

to make the word past tense.

Drag becomes dragged.

But it turns out that treating drag as an irregular verb and using drug as the past tense

is common in some parts of America.

Linguists call it dialect, which essentially means it's a language quirk shared by a group

of people.

...