Ring, rang, rung. Shrink, shrank, shrunk. Begin, began, begun. Confused? It seems that some words undergo orthographic gymnastics to be conjugated properly into the past tense. While moving from ...

I’m a little fussy about past participles. Unjustifiably fussy. It may have to do with the fact that I married someone from small-town Massachusetts, where everything is “I have ate this” and “I ...