A working reference for everyday English.
LexBrew is a free, ad-supported reference for the English questions you actually hit mid-sentence. Affect or effect. Who or whom. Compliment or complement. Each entry shows the wrong version, the right version, the reason, and one line you can carry with you.
Why we built it
Most grammar resources are long and forgettable. They explain the rule before showing the mistake, bury the answer in caveats, and move on without giving you anything to remember. LexBrew is a reaction to that. We start with the wrong sentence — the one you'd write if no one stopped you — then show the corrected version, then explain the difference in plain language. The goal is precision without ceremony.
The site is reference-shaped, not lesson-shaped. There is no curriculum, no progress quiz that gates the next page, no signup. You arrive on an entry, get the answer, and leave. The format respects your time on the way in and on the way out.
What's in here
More than 1,600 entries across confusables ("affect/effect"), homophones ("their/there/they're"), redundancies ("ATM machine"), idioms misquoted into existence ("for all intents and purposes"), eggcorns ("free reign"), one-word-or-two pairs ("everyday/every day"), Indian English usage notes, punctuation, and famous misquotations from Shakespeare, film, and song. The corpus grows weekly. The cornerstone entries — the 300 most-asked questions — get long-form treatment with origin, usage analysis, and historical context.
Who writes it
LexBrew is edited by a small team led by working writers and editors who use the site themselves. Every entry passes through a single editorial voice: short sentences, real examples, no condescension. We don't generate content at scale and republish it; cornerstone entries are written and reviewed by humans, with AI assistance limited to first-draft scaffolding for shelf entries.
The lead editor goes by LexBrew Editorial. Reviewing dictionaries and style guides we lean on regularly: Merriam-Webster, the Oxford English Dictionary, Garner's Modern English Usage, the Chicago Manual of Style, and the AP Stylebook. Our editorial policy spells out how we decide what's right when sources disagree.
How it stays free
The site is supported by a small number of ads served through Google AdSense. We don't sell sponsorships, we don't run native content, and we don't take payment to recommend particular tools. If a recommendation appears on the site, it's editorial. Our privacy policy covers what AdSense can see; it's brief, because the rest of the site collects nothing.
Where we stand on rules
English is a living language. The rules in this reference reflect how careful editors actually use English in 2026 — not the prescriptive lore we were taught in school and not the loosest defensible reading of a dictionary entry. Where usage is split, we say so. Where a rule is recent or contested, we tell you when it appeared and who proposed it. The aim is to help you write precisely, not to win arguments.
The name
Lex is from lexicon — the vocabulary of a language. Brew is the process: careful, iterative, refined. Good language works the same way.
Get in touch
Spotted an error? Want to suggest an entry? Have a press inquiry? Our contact page has the right address for each.