Suppose that you’re writing to convince people of something. Suppose that you’re making your living writing sales copy. Suppose that you have the best product ever and you want to spread the word to as many people as possible. GET PEOPLE TO STOP What do you do? How do you…
MM: Is it Tense in Here?
Let’s take a quick look at verb tenses, shall we? In their simplest form, they’re quite, well, simple. Present Tense: This is the easy one. If it’s happening right now, taking place in the present, the verb is in present tense. Repeat after me: “I am reading Deb’s blog.” See?…
Open House
I just saw this at Lillie‘s last night. Liz Strauss over at the Successful Blog is having a show-and-tell weekend, called Blog-to-Show, where bloggers like myself who don’t have a huge readership can have an open house, sponsored by Liz herself. So, if you found your way here from Liz,…
Punctuation is Not Grammar
Well, you blink, and suddenly a week has gone by! So, continuing in the line started by my series of “linguist vs. grammarian,” let me pose this question: Why do so many so-called grammar books actually focus more on punctuation than on actual grammar? They tell you the correct way…
Linguist vs Grammarian–The Fallout
We said last time that we should examine some of the more far-fetched traditions of hidebound grammatical rules and march bravely into the future. But, there is one more thing about ignoring traditional grammar rules you need to be aware of before you go striding off into the unfettered future.…
MM: Email–a Memo or a Letter?
In the comments to last week’s Mangled Monday about the structure of a letter, Melissa asked: “What do you think about emails that don’t have a salutation? I always try to start mine with a greeting unless I get into a really fast-paced conversation with short emails flying back and…
Linguist vs. Grammarian–Tradition
As we said last time, many of the The Rules that we (supposedly) live by, grammatically speaking, were arbitrarily created by literary men of the past who were trying to organize the English language. Then, as time passed, the rules became venerated. Never use a preposition at the end of…
Linguist vs. Grammarian–Making Language GO
Another post inspired by that excellent book of David Crystal‘s, where he mentions that–in an ideal world–we would raise our children to be linguists rather than grammarians–so that they would know the reasons the language works, not just the rules. Personally, I think that’s a wonderful idea. I’ve always been…
MM: Letterquette
People don’t write letters as often as they used to–emails, yes; text messages, yes; the occasional hand-written note, even, yes … but actual letters? Not so much. Especially outside of normal business hours. So, let’s review the essential elements of a basic letter, shall we? Return Address: On both personal…
Verbal Wardrobe Maintenance
So, we talked last time about the idea of casual and formal writing, as filtered through a wardrobe analogy. (A good image that I can only say I wish I’d thought of myself.) I want people’s writing style to be neat and clean, not all tattered and ragged around the…