From Mercury to Hermeneutics

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In the Last Throes

An amusing egg-corn that has just appeared on my radar is that of writing in the throes of as "in the throws of."

2 2024-12-03 08:51 查看原文

Farther, Further: What's the Difference?

Some authorities offer differentiated meanings for farther and further, but the short answer to the question of which to use for what is that you can just

2 2024-12-21 17:03 查看原文

3 More Examples of Misplaced Modifiers

Words and phrases that provide additional information to clarify relationships between people, places, or things should, for the sake of clarity, be carefully

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3 Cases of Superfluous Semicolons

Semicolons serve one of two purposes: A semicolon can act as a weak period to separate two independent clauses so closely associated that dividing them into

3 2024-11-27 08:25 查看原文

3 Types of Erroneous Use of Dashes

Dashes, like semicolons, are basically commas with superpowers. However, while semicolons take the place of commas to set off independent clauses or separate

1 2024-11-29 21:19 查看原文

5 Types of Unnecessary Hyphenation

The sentences below, each followed by a discussion and a revision, illustrate various ways in which a hyphen is used extraneously.

1 2024-11-29 14:18 查看原文

Metaphorical Usage and Scare Quotes

Writers often mistakenly believe they are being helpful when, in the act of using a word or phrase in a nonliteral sense, they frame the term in quotation

1 2024-11-29 09:55 查看原文

3 More Sentences with Unnecessary Semicolons

1. Some new entrants probably need to have a deeper focus on security and privacy than they have; not least because it is only a matter of time before they,

1 2024-11-28 19:17 查看原文

3 Cases of Missing Parenthetical Punctuation

In each of the following examples, a complementary comma that provides closure for a parenthetical phrase is missing. Discussion after each sentence explains

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5 Categories of Unnecessary Scare Quotes

Each of the sentences in this post demonstrates a distinct example of superfluous use of quotation marks to call attention to a word or phrase. The discussion

1 2024-12-16 22:16 查看原文

3 Types of Superfluous Use of Semicolons

Proper use of semicolons is sometimes seen as such a challenge that some teachers of composition recommend not using them until one develops a more

1 2024-11-30 10:06 查看原文

3 Errors in Using Parentheses

Parenthetical marks can cause difficulties for writers—and, as a result, for readers. In each of the following examples, parentheses are misused; discussion

1 2024-11-27 06:02 查看原文

Word of the Day: Pedantic

Pedantic (pə-dăn'tĭk) is an adjective that represents an excessive concern for precision and formal rules. It can also refer to the ostentation of knowledge.

1 2024-11-29 14:17 查看原文

Say What?

If you're telling a story, you can use two journalism training mnemonics to check that you have covered all the bases. These are the 6Ws and the WHAT formula.

1 2024-11-27 08:25 查看原文

How to Write a Great Blog Post

Blog posts might look straightforward, but if you’ve ever tried to write one, you may have found it was harder than you expected.

1 2024-11-27 14:34 查看原文

Rifle vs. Riffle

A reader has a question about the verbs rifle and riffle in relation to papers:

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3 Strategies for Combining Sentences

One approach to making prose more concise is to stitch together two related sentences by revising one so that it serves as a subordinate clause to the other

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Finding, Founding, and Funding

Find, found, and fund could conceivably be related on the basis of the notion of obtaining something, but the words (except in the case of the link between

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The Language Police

Lovers of language and literature, especially those with children or grandchildren still in Grades K-12, will find The Language Police by education historian

1 2024-11-29 08:52 查看原文

Word Games to Improve Your Writing

It’s hard work to increase your vocabulary by memorising long lists of words and definitions, or to improve your spelling by constantly writing out words you

1 2024-11-29 21:18 查看原文