Ah, the double-edged sword of spell-check. That little red squiggle under misspelled words can be so helpful in drawing your attention to words in need of correction. But the absence of that little red squiggle can give a false sense of security, leading you to think your writing is spelling-error free when it might be filled with correctly-spelled incorrect words. One troublesome group of word is homophones.
CONTINUE READING“Parallelism” means the same parts of a sentence must be of the same type. But I’m not sure how helpful that is as a definition, so let’s take a slightly longer look through a few examples.
CONTINUE READINGIn this post we cover the apostrophe rules that are, for lack of a better word, downright wacky. If you’re going to be an expert, you’ll have to memorize these individually.
CONTINUE READINGAs an editor, I am naturally sensitive to language matters, and I took this criticism seriously. I’ve made an effort to modernize my pronoun usage, and in today’s blog I’ll provide tips to avoid gender bias in your pronoun use.
CONTINUE READINGLets get into the complexities of apostrophes when dealing with singular and plural nouns.
CONTINUE READINGIn research writing, the difference between hypothetical and factual statements is critical; your choice of verb helps make the distinction. In today’s post, I’ll provide a review of the forms and use of modal auxiliary verbs and conditional statements and some basic tips to help you use them effectively in research writing.
CONTINUE READINGEven though the older generations love to dump on them and elites love to complain about them, emojis are a useful, necessary advancement in modern language.
CONTINUE READINGAs a living language, English is in a constant state of flux. This is quite clear when two words work their way into becoming one word. While there's no actual rule about this, there are some patterns.
CONTINUE READINGYou may never have heard the term subjunctive case before, or don’t remember it from Spanish class if you have, but knowing this rule and following it will make your speech and writing much better with just a little effort.
CONTINUE READINGPeople seem to think it’s snooty to say, “Donna and I,” but when they grow up, they also become aware that “Me and Donna” is wrong. So, faced with the choice of “I” (snooty) and “me” (wrong), some opt for the worst choice of all: “myself.”
CONTINUE READINGDummy subject can add unnecessary fluff to a sentence, thus distracting readers from the point and muddling the writer’s meaning. They're easy to avoid.
CONTINUE READINGI encounter incorrectly used words (and made up words) all the time, and today I’ll write about some I’ve noticed popping quite a bit recently, particularly in academic writing.
CONTINUE READINGWe will get your free sample back in three to six hours!