Grammar Makes a Comeback

Good or Well?

Use good to describe the way something is:

Madison is a good dancer.

Use well after an action verb to describe how the action is done:

Madison dances well.

It might surprise you to know that Nintendo has been around for 130 years. Of course, no one was playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 1889; Nintendo started out as a playing-card company.

Nintendo got into the video game market in the 1970s, and for several decades did very good/well with games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, as well as consoles like the Wii. Then in 2012, Nintendo released Wii U. It was a total flop. It seemed like the Nintendo era might be coming to an end.

But then, in 2017, Nintendo released Switch. The new console was a smash hit—and Nintendo has been going strong ever since. Good/Well news, right Mario?

Castles. Robots. Race cars.

You can build just about anything with Lego bricks. No wonder they have been beloved toys since the 1950s. Yet in the late 1990s, Lego’s future seemed uncertain. The company had ventured into money-losing video games and had released action figures, clothing, jewelry, and other products that didn’t sell good/well.

But then in 2004, the company returned to what it did good/well: making Legos. The company sold off the video games, got rid of unpopular products, and put its attention back on the colorful little bricks that had made it successful in the first place. Today, Lego is considered one of the most remarkable comeback stories in business history.

Things weren’t looking good/well for Spider-Man—or for Black Panther, Captain America, or the Hulk either. In fact, all the Marvel superheroes were in trouble, facing an enemy more powerful than any they ’d ever encountered: time.

This was back in the 1990s, when Marvel’s core business was comic books. Comic books just weren’t as popular as they once had been. Marvel was in serious danger.

But all was not lost! The company came up with a good/well idea: to tell the stories of its characters in movies. Today, Marvel’s  movies rake in billions of dollars a year, and Marvel is a household name.