Grammar Girl here. I'm Inyon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about those pesky abbreviations, i.e. and e.g. They don't mean the same thing. And then we're going to have some fun talking about Shakespeare's contributions to the English language, and listen all the way to the end for a special treat this week.

But first, I have a pronunciation correction from last week. The term madmoney first appeared in an Ohio newspaper in Lima, Ohio, not Lima, Ohio. Thanks to everyone who called or wrote, and my

apologies to the people of Lima. Misusing the abbreviations I.E. and E.G. was one of the top

mistakes I used to see when I edited technical documents. There's so much confusion that in some

of the drafts I got back from clients,

they had actually crossed out the right abbreviation and replaced it with the wrong one. And I just

had to laugh and fix it. So I.E and EG are both abbreviations for Latin terms. I.E. stands for

idest and means roughly that is. E.G. stands for Exempli Gratia,

which means, for example. Great, Latin. You're probably thinking, how am I supposed to remember that?

Well, by now, you probably know I'm not going to ask you to remember Latin.

I'm going to give you a memory trick.

So here's how I remember the difference.

Forget about I.E. standing for that is or whatever it really means in Latin. From now on, I, which starts with I, means in other words.

And EG, which starts with E means in other words and e g which starts with e means for example i equals in other words e equals example now a few listeners have also written in to say that they remember the difference between i e and e g by imagining

that i e means ine and eG by imagining that i.e means in essence, an eG, egg, sounds like

egg sample. And those are good memory tricks, too. So now that you have a few tricks for remembering

what the abbreviations mean, let's think about how to use them in a sentence. EG means for example.

So you use it to introduce an example.

I like card games, EG, bridge, and crazy eights.

Now, because I used EG, you know I've given you a list of examples of card games I like.

It's not a finite list of all card games I like. It's not a finite list of all card games I

like. It's just a few examples. On the other hand, I.E. means, in other words, so you use it to introduce

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