Prose Parade
Grammar and writing basics

Let’s make this easy. A memento is a keepsake such as a photograph or a Boston Red Sox pennant from 1955. There is no such word as momento (unless you’re speaking Spanish). Erase it from your memory banks. Oh, look, I wrote memory. Doesn’t it look a lot like memento. Of course, that’s because they have a common Latin root word that has to do with remembering. Oh my, look, another “mem” word.

I’m ragging about this because I heard a reporter on 60 Minutes say “momento,” and he wasn’t speaking Spanish, and he should know better. For shame.