Hi, I'm Minyon Fogarty and I've been thinking a lot about jobs that can be replaced by robots.

It's pretty scary, but it would also be nice to have a break once in a while, or maybe

a robot friend.

What do you think?

1, 2, 3.

Is this thing on?

Grammar Girl here.

Today we have a quick and dirty tip about why the word explain has an eye, but the word

explanation does not, and a meaty middle about how to write an outline for an essay.

I like her, but she might need a little more work, and that's probably a good thing for

me.

Let's start with a quick and dirty tip about explain.

Every time I go to write the word explanation, I think it should have an eye, like the word

explain.

You use an explanation to explain something, right?

They should have the same root, and be spelled the same way, that's what I would expect.

Well, it turns out that explain and explanation do share the Latin root explainare, which

means to make clear, to smooth out, and to level.

And I'll get to why the spellings are different in a minute, but it turns out that explain

has the kind of interesting changes in meaning that I find charming and like to share with

you.

Going back to the 1500s, explain meant to smooth out, like talking about somebody unwrinkling

...