Grammar Girl here.

I'm Minion Focardy and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today we'll talk about some Latin abbreviations you might find interesting and we'll talk about

the difference between implying and inferring.

People confuse those a lot.

And I have a family-lect story at the end.

Let's get started.

Latin is at the root of many of our words in English and there are some common abbreviations

we use.

You may not realize also come from the Latin language.

For example, you've heard me talk about a m and p m or anti-maridium and post-maridium

which refer to the time of day.

And note that I said meridium, not meridian.

Anti-maridium means before the midday.

M, post-maridium means after the midday.

We've also talked about the difference between e.g. or exempli-grashia which means for example

or for instance, and i.e. or id-s which means that is or in other words.

It's not uncommon to confuse the two terms so just remember this simple mnemonic example

and e.g. start with the same letter and in other words and i.e. also start with the same

letter.

For the other Latin abbreviations we use let's start with the eras bc and ad or bce and

...