Tag: grammar
Absolutely Is Absolutely Wrong It’s a well-known fact that absolutely is absolutely wrong. Well, for some people it is. And what makes it worse, is that people often use it as an intensifier for another absolute. I wrote about absolutes before. You can read about them here. Even the dictionaries have succumbed to popular and […]
Am I Grateful or Thankful I’ve had several people write to me about whether to use grateful or thankful, wondering when to use each word. My typical response of verifying my thoughts with a good dictionary and then presenting those people with answers didn’t work, mostly because the dictionaries seemed as confused as those people […]
How Other Languages Affect Ours If you’ve ever wondered how other languages affect ours—wonder no more. All you have to do is look at a calendar, or think about it when you wonder “Where do the months of the year names come from?” Did you ever wonder where we got the names for the months […]
Compare to and Compare With Some authors claim that compare to versus compare with is a useless argument–that they mean essentially the same thing, but this is not supported by actual data. The verb compare has several different meanings, some of which take the preposition “to”, while the others take “with”: Compare A to B […]
Editing by Yourself — Something You Should Never Do I don’t know why I’m writing this, except to help out those who are foolish enough to try to edit a manuscript themselves. It’s not something I recommend; in fact, I strongly oppose it. I write blog posts without editors, but I wouldn’t think of releasing […]
Communication or Communications Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see the following listed as requirements on a job description: candidate must possess good oral and written communications skills. But is it communication or communications. What’s wrong with that? Nothing is wrong with the requested requirement, but it should have read, candidate must possess good oral […]
How to Use Lie, Lay, and Laid and Lain I don’t know if I ever heard anyone use, or even try to use, lain in the proper manner; however, lie, lay, and laid are different stories. And no matter how many times we have been taught, the rules don’t seem to stick. Lie, lay, and […]
The Importance of Punctuation Parentheses ( ) —and when to use them. I’m guessing most of you know the way to use parentheses, but you might be surprised at some of the rules, especially the ones about how to punctuate them. Let’s take a look. The importance of punctuation is…well, important. I know what you’re […]
Wordiness Communication is so important in today’s world, that I’m always puzzled by the terrible misuse of the language. Many people seem to go out of their way to make things sound complicated; in fact, the legal and insurance businesses do it on purpose, I’m sure. They fill their documents and contracts with wordiness so […]
Grammar Doesn’t Matter—or Does It? 17 Time-Consuming Words/Phrases That Make You Look Like An Ass (And, waste your time) There are a lot of people who like to sound intelligent, but at the same time the speak as if grammar doesn’t matter. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to sound intelligent, but they go about it […]
Mike Landis
Giacomo Giammatteo
Mona Curington
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