August 2008

Well, here’s a great place to go–Daniel Scocco put together a fabulous post covering all the basics of English grammar. No, really. Go check it out.

{ 0 comments }

This one has to be a quickie, today, so I’m just going to give you a list of some commonly misspelled words to remind you what they should be. (American spellings, just in case.)

Absence
Accommodate
Commitment
Completely
Definitely (My favorite memory-device for this word? It’s got “finite” right in the middle, and there’s no “a” in finite.)
Environment
Exaggerate
Government
Indispensable
Misspell (ironic, that!)
Parallel
Privilege
Separately
Vacuum

{ 8 comments }

There is an article in the current issue of Time Magazine that talks about spelling reform, and discusses the proposal that we offer official, variantions for spellings of some of the most commonly-misspelled words.
The senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University in Buckinghamshire, England sees so many misspellings in papers submitted by first-year students [...]

{ 16 comments }

Last week, we briefly discussed the different verb “persons,” but this is important in writing and warrants some extra attention.
Because, you see, it comes down to “voice,” and voice is extraordinarily important in narrative.
First Person, when the speaker uses “I”. That is, I, We, Me, Us
So far as narrative goes, you would use this when [...]

{ 2 comments }

So, if people don’t learn grammar in school any more, and they’re not bothering to read the handy usage guides that are in the bookstores, how DO people manage to speak and write correctly?
Mostly, it’s in the ear.
It’s a fascinating phenomenon, how we humans learn language. Babies begin learning the ins and outs of language [...]

{ 2 comments }

We take time away from this friendly little writing blog for a rant….
Have you heard of Mozy? It’s an online backup service for your computer, where you sign up, set up a schedule for backups and … that’s it. Your computer henceforth automatically runs backups to Mozy’s server so that in the event of computing [...]

{ 8 comments }

So, the last two weeks, we’ve talked about verb tenses and moods. Today, we’ll talk about their person. In their simplest form…
First Person: I, We
A verb uses first person when the speaker is talking about himself.

I love typing.
We watched the race.
I am going to go to the movies tonight.

Second Person: You
Second person is the verb [...]

{ 4 comments }

Kenneth over at Manage Your Writing spoke the other day about the importance of keeping things simple. He reminds us that, “Some research shows that when readers and listeners can’t understand your sentences, they think of you as less intelligent, not more.”
I certainly agree with that. Unnecessarily complex sentence construction confounds your readers’ need for [...]

{ 5 comments }

I saw this at Brad’s. So, there’s a project over at “Get Paid to Write Online,” asking people how they got started with their blogs.
Well, my story comes in two parts.
First, there was knitting. (Yes, you heard me. Knitting.) In fact, my very first introduction to blogs at all was because of knitting. I knit [...]

{ 10 comments }