A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated my 42nd birthday. As usual, I received hundreds of wishes through LinkedIn, Facebook, and various other social media sites and newsletters. One thing I noticed is how people write “happy birthday” varies. A common method was “Happy Birthday Kim”. In extending a grammatically correct birthday greeting, there are 3 things… Continue reading How to properly wish someone a happy birthday
Category: Writing
Stop teasing people with your garden path sentences
A garden path sentence leads a reader to interpret it one way only to learn later that the interpretation was incorrect. In other words, you teased them. For example, take the following sentence: Fat people eat accumulates.
Should we eliminate “that” from our writing?
A few years ago, I was discussing the difference between “that” and “which” with some colleagues. Specifically, we were discussing how to use them in restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. One of my colleagues commented that he heard a grammarian once say that if you eliminated “that” from your vocabulary, you’d eliminate most poor writing. Someone… Continue reading Should we eliminate “that” from our writing?
Difference between lightening and lightning
Last week, a photo popped up on my Facebook feed with the following caption: Sitting beside the ocean listening to the waves and watching the lightening. It prompted me to write this blog post about the difference between lightening (which the author used) and lightning (which the author meant).
You can’t change the risk of death
Last week, a health story broke in the mainstream media regarding trans fats. I normally wouldn’t discuss health topics on here, but the phrasing the media has been using has troubled me.
5 examples of wordiness fails (and how they should’ve looked)
Anyone who follows me on Twitter has probably seen me tweet one of my shrink tips. They’re examples of wordiness I’ve come across while editing, and I share them with my condensed, edited versions. Usually, my shrink tips involve removing a word or two, but over the last couple of months, there’ve been a handful… Continue reading 5 examples of wordiness fails (and how they should’ve looked)
Why you must give up using “very” and “really”
We often use “very” and “really” for emphasis. They’re easy to use; we just plop them in front of another word to give that other word more impact. For example, “I’m very hungry” tells the reader I’m not just your run-of-the-mill hungry. It’s more than that. The problem, however, is that since this practice is so… Continue reading Why you must give up using “very” and “really”
Don’t worry, it’s all right to use “alright”
As someone who gets paid to correct others’ grammar, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I’ve heard more than my fair share of people spouting off grammatical rules. Some of those rules are legitimate, while others are made-up and nothing more than myths. In fact, here’s a myth: “Alright” isn’t a real… Continue reading Don’t worry, it’s all right to use “alright”
There are only 3 times you should capitalize a word
During a class at church yesterday, I noticed the presentation on the screen at the front of the room had an abundance of capital letters in it. Far more than necessary. I see this fairly often, and it’s one of the writing mistakes I correct most frequently. You should capitalize words in basically only 3… Continue reading There are only 3 times you should capitalize a word
Do you use ’s to make words plural? Please stop!
Without even trying, it seems I’ve had a bit of a theme in my writing posts recently: writing blunders on social media. Have you read my posts on alot vs a lot and the overuse of the ellipses? It seems I’ll be carrying on this theme with today’s post: the use of the apostrophe when… Continue reading Do you use ’s to make words plural? Please stop!