Forget about your NCAA bracket: If you’re more concerned about your Grammar Madness bracket, check out the winner of the first Grammar Madness battle here.
Forget about your NCAA bracket: If you’re more concerned about your Grammar Madness bracket, check out the winner of the first Grammar Madness battle here.
All right, you pedants. Let the public shaming begin. Grammarlyblog’s tournament of grammatical errors — Grammar Madness — begins today. If you love spotting errors on social media, this tournament is for you. Today’s vote focuses on contextual spelling mistakes — the old pore/pour kind of slip. So get surfing the web for the most… Continue Reading
It’s National Grammar Day (well, it is in the US, anyway), so amuse yourself with some fun blogs devoted to the subject. This post by Copyediting has several fun suggestions.
I came across a post by Grammar Girl today, which discussed the use of two pairs of words: preventive vs. preventative orient vs. orientate Grammar Girl says they’re both correct, but for Americans the shorter words preventive and orient are more common. I’d concur for Canadians — COD equates the words. CP style, however, stipulates… Continue Reading
I love writers who introduce me to new words (I’m looking at you, Rex Murphy and Conrad Black). I recently discovered the word irenic (“no irenic third way”) in a well written and well researched article by Reverend Joe Boots in Jubilee, a local magazine. (Sorry about the magazine cover — it’s absolutely execrable.) Irenic… Continue Reading
Are you a pompous grammarian with a competitive entrepreneurial spirit? Then get over to FundAnything and help Grammar Girl with her new game, Peeve Wars. Peeve Wars is a card game in which you collect peeve cards to annoy your opponent. My favourite peeve card is the Grammar Snob (“Just because you’re correct doesn’t mean… Continue Reading
Language is constantly changing, and good editors stay abreast of changes in usage and spelling. But last night, a writer sent me reaching for the dictionary because I was sure he had misused nonplussed, and I was absolutely nonplussed by his incorrect usage. I’m currently reading The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis, who will… Continue Reading
I bet you’ve noticed my new pet peeve a lot lately: the overuse of event by marketers. We used to talk about event venues or about sports events. There was some importance attached to an event, or at least some kind of formal program. Not anymore. Yes, it’s been a brutal winter, but do I… Continue Reading
There are lots of troublesome words that writers often get mixed up: further/farther, pour/pore, comprise/compose, and so on. I’ve discussed this in a previous post. Copy editors are well aware of these words and do their best to catch such errors of usage. Today in a tweet, a writer described a list “titled” something-or-other (titled… Continue Reading
Most people are familiar with the problem of gender-biased language. Many terms have been changed to include both genders: mankind → humankind fireman → firefighter spokesman → spokesperson housewife → homemaker But do you notice anything wrong with the following sentences? One of the committee’s members was confined to a wheelchair. The First Nations kids… Continue Reading