Confusables Recently, the fine folks at copyediting.com began a new series of podcasts to address what they call "confusables": those word pairs that give a lot of speakers and writers of English trouble because of their similarities in spelling or pronunciation. For example, they address discreet/discrete, disburse/disperse, ...
Tag Archive: grammar
National Grammar Day: A Quiz
Believe it or not, today--March 4--is National Grammar Day. To help celebrate this auspicious occasion, and to further grammar education throughout the Internet (always capitalized, incidentally), I have combed through hundreds--maybe even thousands--of blog entries to bring you the following quiz.
Two-Minute Drill: The Comma Splice
For some reason, discussion of comma splices is on the upswing lately. I've run across it at least three times in recent weeks; most recently, at Copyediting's Fiddly Rules Podcast #12.[1. Except when I went to listen to the podcast, the link took me to ...
A Pro and Con View of Language
I was talking with a friend on Saturday, and our discussion caused my thoughts to spin off on a totally unrelated tangent (although I eventually brought it back to a point we were discussing). I asked, “Do you know why I love words so much?” And suddenly that started me off on a dissertation I ...
Weekly Word Count: January 22
What Is This? Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar,
Two-Minute Drill: Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, and More
Wouldn’t writing in English be so much easier if we could just write out words, or combinations of words, the way they sound? Instead of typing out forget about it, I could simply write fuggedaboudit and be done. Of course, if I’m writing dialogue, I can do such things, if the character’s vernacular is ...
Passive and Possessive—Pronouns for Pros
How about some mad props for the alliterative title? Hopefully, it caught your attention and prompted you to read more. So without further ado…. First, let’s be sure we’re all on the same page with respect to what pronouns are. They are words we substitute for nouns, generally to avoid repeating the nouns each ...
Two-Minute Drill: Allude and Elude
This post is the first in what I hope will be a series of short (two minutes to read) articles highlighting commonly confused or misused words. I was reading a blog article yesterday, and the following sentence caught my eye. Then it made me grit my teeth. Fortunately, I have a dentist appointment Thursday ...
Grammar Potpourri: Homophones
When I first discussed grammar and punctuation back in mid-September (was it that long ago?), many of you commented about things I hadn’t included. Today, I’m going to address some of those. If there are others I don’t discuss today, rest assured they will be covered Some Day Soon.TM ...
Capital Ideas
As I kick off a new series of grammar and punctuation articles to kick off the new year, I figured we might as well start at the top. Based on a suggestion on Twitter from Tami, aka @tami_moore , I’m going to tackle capitalization: when, how, and where. The Rules There ...
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