In last week’s Toolbox we sorted out the meanings of whose (indicates possession) and who’s (a contraction of who is). This week we’ll look beyond spelling at usage?and debunk a non-rule that’s been confusing writers for a long time. People and Animals Whose is the possessive form of the pronouns who and which. There’s no… Read more »
Chalk it up to bad influence from autocorrect, but one error that’s becoming more and more common is the incorrect spelling of who’s and whose. Still, although these homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings) look tricky enough, they’re actually quite easy to sort out. Who’s with me? Who’s Who’s is a… Read more »
“Two dollars.” “To the death.” “Too much.” To the ear they sound the same?but when written down, they can cause confusion and a whole lot of misspellings. This week we’ll take a closer look at how to avoid making errors when using these three homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently): two,… Read more »
Grammar may feel like It’s all about rules?but the rules are always changing, and what was considered horrendous usage a century ago may be perfectly acceptable (or even preferable) today. One example is the former taboo on ending sentences with prepositions another is the much-maligned but now perfectly respectable split infinitive. To Infinity The infinitive… Read more »
If you frequent the literary blogosphere, chances are you’ve come across calls to join fellow writers over on the dark side: the intense, but ultimately rewarding NaNoWriMo, which begins November 1. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Participants commit to creating a first draft of a 50,000-word novel, from start to… Read more »
Over the weekend, my husband?ever the prankster?conducted a social experiment. It was inspired by Cracked.com’s list of “22 Eerily Plausible Conspiracy Theories (We Just Made Up),” a hilarious parody of the click-bait posters that seem to be proliferating on social media these days. A lot of them were too far over the top to be… Read more »
Over the past two columns (part 1 and part 2) we’ve covered nouns of direct address, their uses, and how to apply appropriate punctuation. But when using these nouns there’s another factor that many writers don’t even realize exists: proper capitalization. Mystified? Read on! All in the Family Is it “Mom” or “mom”? “Grandma” or… Read more »
In last week’s column, we looked at nouns that directly address the person or thing You’re speaking to. We learned the general rule for these nouns of direct address: set them off with a comma or pair of commas, depending on where they’re located in the sentence. The general rule is easy enough to understand… Read more »
Have you ever, during the course of a conversation, used the name of the person (or object!) you were speaking to? That’s a noun of direct address. Chances are you gave it very little thought, and That’s perfectly normal. But if you tried to put it in writing?especially if you were writing dialogue?you might have… Read more »
Last week we started our mini-series on the confusing words and phrases using all. We discovered the difference between alright and all right (hint: the former’s not a real word!) and altogether (totally) and all together (a grouping). Now It’s time to move on to these often-confused pairs: already and all ready and all and… Read more »