Grammar Girl here. This week I have a quick and dirty tip for you about dream-differences

dreamt. A piece about why we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. And finally, a tidbit

about what I call the Brick and Bracken Buffalo sentence. But first, I have an announcement.

I gave a TEDx talk about language change a few weeks ago, and now you can watch it on

YouTube. Just do a Google search for Grammar Girl TEDx.

I'll also put a link in the show notes so you'll be able to see it if you're listening

on your phone or tablet. If you like the video, please leave a comment or share it with your friends.

And now an answer for the dreamers. A few years ago, a man named D. Chapp wrote in and said,

quote, I was thinking about the words dreamed and dreamt. I've heard it used both ways and I've

seen it written both ways. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to me about what the proper usage

would be if there is one. You don't say cramped when you're trying to say creamed, or the same

thing with gleamed and glumpt. You never hear those. So I was wondering what the proper usage was

for dreamed versus dreamt. The reason he's confused is that dreamed and dreamt are both

allowable past tense forms of the verb to dream. Drampt is the irregular form and is often

described as the British version of the word. However, a Google Books and Gramm search shows that

dreamed is more common than dreamt in both British and American English. Still, dreamt is on

more equal footing in Britain than in America. Dreamt is used only about two and a half times

more often than dreamt in British English, but about seven times more often than dreamt in American

English. You can use whichever form you prefer, but dreamed will probably look more normal than

dreamt to your readers. And that was your quick and dirty tip. And now I have a piece by Eric Decker's.

George Carlin once famously asked, why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

And the crowd went nuts. Of course, the crowd would go nuts for anything Carlin said, but that's

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