Grammar/Punctuation

There’s an AT&T Wireless commercial, showing a father knocking on steamy car windows at a make-out spot, looking for his daughter because he hadn’t gotten her text message about spending a night at a friend’s house. The voice-over has him saying something to the effect that, “Come Monday, you’ll be known as the girl with [...]

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What do you think about using slang in your writing?
The official Rule is that you should avoid colloquialisms when you write. I can give you two good reasons for this.
1. They date your writing, just like any other popular reference. You can refer to some popular television show or catch-phrase, and all is well and [...]

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Sure, emoticons are handy little things to toss into an e-mail to a friend. But when they come en masse, they become obnoxious. One bee buzzing around your picnic is atmosphere, but a swarm can get, er, difficult. Similarly, an e-mail with one little smiley face is cute. One that has one after every other sentence? Gag (as they said in my high school days).

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Well, I wish I’d known this yesterday….
Not only was March Fourth the only day on the calendar that is a complete sentence, but it was also National Grammar Day.
Who knew?
(I mean, other than Sharon at Daily Writing Tips, which is where I saw it.)

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Too many exclamation points make you sound like an overly-excited teenager, jabbering on the telephone to her BFF. (Like, OMG!) Now, obviously, there are times when you need to use them. Nobody calmly says, “Stop,” to a toddler running toward a busy road. If there’s a fire, you shout, “Fire!” I mean, the punctuation exists for a reason.

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Out of so many grammatical stumbling points, I can’t choose one on which to focus today . . .
So, let me ask you. Do you have any specific questions you’d like to see addressed? Topics I have not covered yet? Tips you’d like to you share?
Honestly, I’m at a loss. Not because there aren’t enough [...]

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Let’s just do a quick run-down on how you use quotation marks, shall we? (American-style, that is–I know some of these rules are different with British usage, but can only speak for American-English.)

Simply put–and it should be redundant–quotation marks are used for quotations. If you are quoting some of my many words of wisdom, you [...]

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Short but sweet today.
My sister (glaring at me because I dare to like Strunk & White, which she and my niece are studying) asked me today what I thought about whether the preposition “up” should be used when writing a sentence such as:

You brighten up my day

Or

You brighten my day.

I was in the middle of [...]

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Do you remember, from grade school English, how to properly annotate a title?
Titles of books, newspapers, magazines, movies, poems, journals, TV shows, works of art, musical compositions, ships, and airplanes should all be underlined. Or, italicized. They are more or less interchangeable so far as typing goes.
This is because handwriting, of course (does anybody write [...]

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