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The Millions takes a look at the colon, that little-used form of punctuation.
Archive for the ‘Grammar’ Category
The colon: In use more than ever?
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010National Grammar Day
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Happy National Grammar Day! As Grammar Girl points out, “Language is something to be celebrated, and March 4 is the perfect day to do it. It’s not only a date, it’s an imperative: March forth on March 4 to speak well, write well, and help others do the same!”
Help for writers
Friday, January 29th, 2010
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From FreelanceFolder: “20 Writing Mistakes That Make Any Freelancer Look Bad”
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Resources to Help You Improve Your Communication
Here are four great resources that can help you improve your writing:
- Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Grammar Girl provides regular tips and podcasts to help improve your grammar.
- The Purdue Online Writing Lab. This is probably the best known of all the grammar sites. If you have an English usage question you’ll find the answer is here.
- Grammar Monster. This site contains interactive writing lessons and quizzes.
- Grammar Slammer. You’ll find some good snippets of information here.
An analogy as bad as …
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010The English Teachers Network has put together the worst analogies ever written in a high school essay. Very funny!
Misspelling
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010From The Oatmeal: Ten words you need to stop misspelling.
Setting the style?
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009The American Psychological Association’s style manual is a well-respected source for publication style information. Or, at least it used to be. The latest edition is so riddled with errors that the APA has decided to scrap it and start over, issuing a new edition.
Fun with collective nouns
Monday, October 12th, 2009One of the fun features I’ve come to love about Google is the community feedback on a topic. One Web site asks us to contribute our suggestions for the names of collective nouns. Here are a few:
a service of waiters – a remembrance of dreams – a party of mustaches
a slurry of bagsnatchers – a pestilence of 10 year olds – a deposit of millionaires
a squabble of politicians – an interference of mangers – an extravagance of millionaires
a correction of editors – a scribe of editors – an output of managers
a kindle of kittens – a soupline of journalists – a vault of millionaires
a tipple of whiskies – a proof of whiskies – a yowling of cats
a balance of judges – a swoon of zombies – a grandiosity of opera singers
a flight of dragons – a flush of plumbers – a flame of dragons
a conflagration of dragons – a prickle of hedgehogs – a huddle of hedgehogs
RIP William Safire
Monday, September 28th, 2009Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and language lover William Safire has died at the age of 79.
Here’s the New York Times obit. An excerpt:
“Mr. Safire also wrote four novels, including “Full Disclosure” (Doubleday, 1977), a best-seller about succession issues after a president is blinded in an assassination attempt, and nonfiction that included “The New Language of Politics” (Random House, 1968), and “Before the Fall” (Doubleday, 1975), a memoir of his White House years. And from 1979 until earlier this month, he wrote “On Language,” a New York Times Magazine column that explored written and oral trends, plumbed the origins and meanings of words and phrases, and drew a devoted following, including a stable of correspondents he called his Lexicographic Irregulars.”
Here’s a link to his farewell column, an essay on how to read a column.
Here’s a link to his famous trouncing of Hillary Clinton, in which he called her a liar.
Politics aside, it was nice to have a language lover and grammarian in our midst. RIP.
A great day for grammarians!
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Happy National Punctuation Day!
Collective nouns
Monday, September 14th, 2009They’re fun, they’re informative, they’re descriptive, they’re head-scratching: collective nouns. Sure, there’s a school of fish, a pride of lions, a herd of cattle, but there’s also a murder of crows, an exultation of larks. Ah! the wonders of the language.
Via Twitter, people can make up new collective nouns and vote for their favorite suggestions. Check it out.
Oh, one does, do they?
Monday, July 27th, 2009What is the universal pronoun to be used for the neutral-gender singular? Apparently, according to The New York Times, what it’s always been.
Why ‘I’ and not ‘me’
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009The New York Times gives us some history on why we capitalize the first-person singular nominative pronoun “I” and no other pronouns.
An editor’s work is never done …
Monday, July 20th, 2009Someone at Vanity Fair took a red pen (and a green and a blue) to Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. It’s so hard to find good editorial humor.
The words
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
“That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places.”
— Raymond Carver, from “On Writing”
March 4th; celebrate Grammar Day
Thursday, March 5th, 2009March 4th has been declared to be National Grammar Day. It’s also the only day that, when spoken aloud, is a complete sentence. (March forth!)
Too bad I didn’t know about the holiday yesterday. I could have stayed home or had cake or something. Still, it’s nice to know somebody still cares about writing with clarity. It’s like seeing a light in a storm on a dark night. OK, well, maybe not that powerful, but it’s nice.
Harry S. Truman? or Harry S Truman?
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
I just ran across this question while looking up another grammar question.
I had always heard that the “S” was something the president made up, because he didn’t have a middle name, so it did not take a period after it. But according to the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, he claimed it wasn’t followed by a period because it didn’t stand for any name, but was a “compromise” for two other names. Then he went on to add a period after the “S” in his own signature. Go figure.
By the way, there are games and activities for kids at the Truman Web site, too. Click on the word search puzzle.
Christmas vs. Xmas
Friday, December 19th, 2008A message from Grammar Girl about the origin and appropriateness of “Xmas”:
Retailers have long been accused of secularizing Christmas by using “Xmas” in signs and advertisements; therefore, I suspect many of you will be surprised to learn that “Xmas” has a religious origin. In Greek, the letter “chi” is written as an X, and chi is the first letter of the Greek word for “Christ.” Greeks sometimes abbreviated “Christ” as “X.” For example, they abbreviated “Christ savior” as “XP.” (”P” is the symbol for the Greek letter “rho,” which is the first letter of the word “savior” in Greek.) The Oxford English Dictionary shows the first known English use of “Xmas” in 1551.
As for appropriateness, “Xmas” may have a religious origin and fit better on signs, but many people — both those who use “Xmas” and those who complain about its use — are unaware of the religious origin. If you choose you use “Xmas,” you should know that some people will be infuriated.