Two famous, latin abbreviations that so many people seem to get wrong. i.e. is short for “id est” and should be used for “that is.” I strongly recommend the driver of the automobile cease their forward movement at this time, i.e, STOP! This weekend, I played with my kids, ran…
How to Prevent Equipment Failures from Ruining Your Writing
There’s nothing more aggravating than having your writing flow interrupted by bad equipment. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a blog post, a letter, an article, or your doctoral thesis. Interruptions by people are bad enough, but having your equipment let you down is just one, long frustration. So,…
MM: Question
I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think of a punctuation mark we haven’t discussed yet. We’ve covered periods, commas, exclamation points, quotation marks, colons, semi-colons, and hyphens, not to mention parentheses, ellipses, and dashes. What else is there? Then the light dawned. The answer was right there in front…
Dressing Up Your Casual-Wear Writing
I’m in the middle of reading a book called The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left by David Crystal, about language and the way we use, need, and apply rules. His premise is that grammar pundits who insist on rules are not acting in the best…
Link-Love Pep Talk
If you want to make a stab at Confident Writing, it helps to give some thought to what you’re doing, because Writing Thoughts lead to a Writer’s Words, and without them, you will never move your Writing Forward. If you inspire yourself with Daily Writing Tips, soon you’ll be Writing,…
MM: Semi-Colon
The primary use of a semi-colon is to link two sentences together. Now, obviously, sentences are usually kept separate and distinct. Sometimes, however, they are very involved with each other, and like to keep close. Like twins, or mirror images, they’re more connected to each other than to the sentences…
7 Gas-Saving Tips to Help Your Writing
I don’t need to tell you that the price of gasoline is going up, but did you know that the same tips that can help extend your gas mileage can help your writing, too? Don’t Speed. Go Slow and Steady. Take your time. There’s no need to rush, just work…
MM: It’s a Date
Have you ever given any thought to how you write the date? 365 (or 366) days, broken out into 12 months, of 28, 29, 3o, or 31 days, all sequentially counted in groups called years. Now, the months themselves may be spelled out, so that this month is written as…
Once Upon a Time…
Most people will tell you that, if you want to write, you should read. A lot. That there is no better training for being a good writer (other than the actual writing part). Now, reading a lot has never been a problem for me. Quite the contrary–my problem has always…
MM: Colonoscopy
I’ve covered many of the other punctuation marks, but not yet the Colon, otherwise known as the pair of eyes (:) in a classic emoticon smiley<:)>. Other than looking at you, though, it has other uses: Primarily, it alerts the reader to the fact that a list or explanation is…