We humans are notorious for butchering our native tongue in strange and often humorous ways. But did you know there are terms for some of those linguistic faux pas? Let’s take a look at a few kinds of misheard and misused expressions: Malapropisms A malapropism is...
Do you insert one space or two after a period? Many people are surprisingly (even absurdly) passionate about their preference, yet this seemingly minor issue is not nearly as cut-and-dried as it may at first appear. A Little Background on a Longstanding Debate The...
Other posts in this blog are devoted to writing and editing concerns, but this one is not. A few years ago, a neighbor asked if I would have coffee with her college-bound son and give him some advice. Having made a list of thoughts to share, I decided to clean it up...
Careful writers ensure that items in a list are parallel with one another in both meaning and form. That is, all items must be both logically and grammatically similar; when they are, the information is more coherent and easier to absorb. Today, we’re looking...
As spring graduation season wraps up here in the United States, now is a good time to talk about alumnus, alumni, alumna, and alumnae. Many of us struggle to remember which of these terms are masculine, which are feminine, which are singular, and which are plural. The...
My first exposure to the phrase “myth rules” was the use of that expression in Edgar H. Schuster’s 2003 book (which I highly recommend), Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers through Innovative Grammar Instruction. But long before I discovered Schuster’s list of...
