I've been having a lively conversation with my friend Kevin, around the merits of certain grammatical rules. I seemed to have ended up in the descriptivist camp, while Kevin is representing the prescriptivists. Of course, the delineation is never that simple. I think there's more of a spectrum, with 'do whatever you want' at one [...]
It’s a very tricky thing trying to position yourself as a 'writing expert'. You open yourself up to internet excoriation. Invariably, there will be errors that slip into some things (most things?) that you write, and other writing geeks will be keen to take aim at any error, perceived or actual. Grammar Girl, in her [...]
—This is an em dash. It is the width of a capital M. –This is an en dash. It is the width of a capital N. -This is a hyphen. It is the width of... er... a hyphen. The hyphen is not a dash. It's a hyphen—used to hyphenate things; intra-word punctuation, generally. It is [...]
There are certain sentences that simply cannot be rephrased in passive voice. Again, I'm not talking about a vibe... It's a grammatical thing. Consider this: Active: He is going to become an editor. Try and make that passive... An editor is going to be become by him? The thing is, the subject and the object [...]
If you've ever been to a plain English or web-writing course, or read any of the 'how-tos', or the 'please-don'ts' on the subject, you would be aware, that generally, the imperative is: write in active voice!
Definition: Misusing grammatical rules by overthinking how they should be applied or applying them in the wrong context At some point, we might have been told that it is better manners to say 'yourself', instead of 'you'. Or 'you and I' instead of 'you and me'. But if your teacher were to tell you that 'Fred [...]
Today, an email passed in front of my eyes. It was sent by an Important Person to the whole of a large organisation. The tone was conversational, but with an air of gravitas. Please be aware that myself, Person X and Person Y have moved offices to... I'm sure you've seen this kind of thing [...]
Apostrophes: The punctuation mark most likely to freak out the grammatically obsessive compulsive. Some of us have learned to block out excessive exclamation marks, deal with over-earnest ellipses… come to terms with Tenuous Title Case, and cope with careless comma splices, but when someone uses an apostrophe to indicate a plural, we may twitch a [...]
Muphry’s law: In the course of correcting someone else’s English, you will make a mistake yourself. A fitting first post for a blog about writing and grammar…