Everything and anything about grammar.
When to Refer to Animals by Gender I’m writing this post in response to an email question I received regarding how to refer to animals when writing. Should I refer to the dog as it or he? They asked. The answer to when to refer to animals by gender is both simple and not so…
The Truth About Redundancies People don’t seem to care much about redundancies, but that might be because they don’t know the truth about redundancies. What truth? The fact that while you may not care about them, the people who do are silently snickering every time you use one. And while they may not say anything…
7 Common Grammar Mistakes And How to Correct Them The how-to-correct-them-part is easy. Practice using them right. Make a habit out of it. Don’t simply read this article, and then forget it. Read the article, and then select one of the grammar rules and practe using it properly for several weeks. After that, your list…
Compound Word List Compound words stymie people all the time. And I don’t mean just regular people whose profession is not writing. I know of many writers who struggle with when to use one word and when to use two, or when to hyphenate. This list of compound words should help. This is not a…
Dialogue Tags What Are Dialogue Tags and When Is It Best to Use Them? People, meaning writers, seem to mess up dialogue tags a whole lot. In an attempt to sound “writerly” or make it appear as if they are experience authors, they use ridiculous dialogue tags when they shouldn’t. What do I mean? The…
Capitalizing Dialogue You’ve already learned about dialogue tags—I hope. Now learn how capitalizing dialogue is easy. Read on to find out how to capitalize dialogue—when to do it and when not to. Capitalizing Dialogue Capitalizing dialogue is one of the areas that makes authors stumble, especially new authors. Don’t let it. It’s not that difficult….
Are Pre Words Redundant? Pre is a prefix that means before. It’s fairly easy to understand and everyone I know of uses pre in one way or another. But are pre words redundant? preorder preboard preview prerecord pre-announce pre-arrange These are but a few of the pre words. There are many more. The problem I have with…
“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…