Grammar Girl here. I'm In Yon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're

going to talk about when the letter L is silent and qualifying words like always and most.

But first, I have a couple of extras from recent episodes. First, after the

piece about the origin of corn and how corned beef got its name, Robert wrote in to tell me that

corn isn't a vegetable. It's actually a fruit. I had no idea. And corn isn't the only food to surprise me. Robert also said botanists classify

tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and other squashes as fruits. And it checks out.

And I did some other searching and it turns out that olives and avocados are also fruits.

Technically, fruit develops from the flower or ovary of the plant after it's fertilized. Pea pods are fruits, and the peas themselves are

seeds. Same with green beans. And again, botanically, a banana is actually a berry. You learn something every day. Thanks, Robert.

And then people had follow-up questions about how to write the word okay when it's two letters.

Today, it's written as the capital letters O and K without any periods. But for many years, it was written as capital letters with periods.

And originally, in the Boston Morning Post in 1836, when it first appeared, it was written as lowercase

letters with periods. So it's changed a lot over the years, and it's entirely possible that it could change again.

A couple of people commented that they write it all lowercase without periods right now,

and maybe someday that'll catch on enough that dictionaries and style guides will include it.

But for now, in professional writing, stick with OK, uppercase with no periods,

or spelled out as lowercase OKA-Y.

Today, we're answering an intriguing question from a listener named Michael, who asks,

why do we drop the L in words like

almond and chalk? This is one of those language mysteries that reveals how words evolve over time.

You might not have noticed, but those of us who speak English treat the letter L in some interesting

ways. Sometimes we say it, sometimes we don't,

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