How we decide what's right.
A reference is only as good as the reasoning behind it. This page documents how LexBrew sources, reviews, and corrects its content — and how to push back on us when we get something wrong.
What we publish
LexBrew covers usage questions in English that come up regularly in real writing — confusable pairs, homophones, redundancies, idiom misquotations, eggcorns, punctuation, regional variation, and historically misattributed lines. We don't publish style opinion pieces, listicles unrelated to language use, or content unrelated to the reference's purpose.
Sources
Every cornerstone entry references at least one of the following: the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, the American Heritage Dictionary, the Cambridge English Dictionary, Garner's Modern English Usage, Fowler's Modern English Usage, the Chicago Manual of Style, the AP Stylebook, or the New Hart's Rules. Sources used for a specific entry are listed in its meta footer. When dictionaries or style guides disagree, the entry says so explicitly and explains how careful editors typically choose.
Etymology and historical notes draw from the OED, the Online Etymology Dictionary, and primary sources where available. Quotations attributed to historical figures are checked against at least two reputable references; if a popular line cannot be verified, the entry says so and shifts to a "frequently misattributed" framing rather than perpetuating the misattribution.
How entries are written and reviewed
Cornerstone entries — the 300 most commercially and pedagogically important pages — are drafted, edited, and reviewed by human editors before publication. AI assistance is permitted at the brainstorming and outlining stages but not at the prose stage; first-pass AI prose is rewritten by the editor responsible for the entry. Every cornerstone entry carries a "Reviewed YYYY-MM-DD" line in its meta footer.
Shelf entries — the broader 1,300+ entries across smaller categories — follow the same template and the same sourcing standards but receive lighter individual review. They are spot-audited periodically against the source dictionaries, and any reader-reported error triggers a re-review of nearby entries in the same shelf.
Voice and stance
LexBrew aims for a single editorial voice: direct, plainspoken, free of jargon, free of condescension. We prefer descriptive accuracy over prescriptive purity. Where a rule has been overtaken by usage — or was always shakier than usage manuals claim — we say so. Where a rule remains live in edited prose despite changes in casual speech, we say that too. The phrase "in edited writing" carries a specific meaning here: it refers to standards in published, professionally edited journalism, books, and corporate communications, not to colloquial standards.
We do not moralize about language. People who say "less" with countables are not lazy or uneducated; they're using a form that was perfectly standard for a thousand years before a 1770 grammarian decided otherwise. The reference exists to help you choose deliberately, not to make you feel bad about choosing differently.
Corrections
If you find an error — a wrong example, a misattributed quotation, a citation that doesn't check out, a typo, an entry that contradicts the source it cites — please write to us at hello@lexbrew.app with "Correction" in the subject line. We aim to acknowledge corrections within five business days and publish substantive fixes within ten. The "Reviewed" date on the entry footer is updated when the entry is meaningfully revised.
For errors of fact (etymology, dates, attributions), we publish a brief note at the bottom of the affected entry describing what was changed and when. For typos and minor wording fixes, the change history lives in the site's source repository.
What we don't do
We don't accept paid placements. We don't accept editorial guest posts. We don't insert affiliate links into entries. We don't republish entries from other sites under different titles. We don't generate content in bulk through AI tooling and pass it off as edited work. If a tool, book, or service appears on the site, the recommendation is editorial.
Conflicts of interest
The editorial team does not hold financial relationships with the dictionaries or style guides cited on the site. Any future commercial relationship that could create a conflict — for example, a partnership with a publisher whose work we cite — would be disclosed at the bottom of affected entries.
Changes to this policy
Material changes to how we source, review, or correct content will be reflected on this page, with the "Last updated" date at the top revised accordingly. Substantive policy changes are summarized in a brief note at the bottom of the page.