February 20
Business Writing Blog
For those of you who write for business purposes, and for those who like to make every effort to refine your writing, I’d like to direct you to Lynn Gaetner-Johnston‘s Business Writing Blog. (I’m only going to discuss her blog, but she has an e-zine, books and classes, if you’re interested.) This blog is useful [...]
February 13
Punctuation and Quotation Marks
Last week, there were some comments on a couple of blogs suggesting that Grammarly had incorrectly placed punctuation. What?! We’re infallible! :) No, we’re human, and we make our share of mistakes; we appreciate it when people point them out, too. This time, though, we didn’t mess up. We just weren’t playing by the American [...]
January 30
Shiny New, or Tried and True?
The new year always brings about new lists. These lists travel through social media, trying to take root in our hopes for a better/different future. I posted one of the don’t-you-dare-use-these lists at the beginning of January. One of the lists I declined to post was this one from the Word Warriors at Wayne State [...]
January 23
Making The Reader Work
We feed babies baby food. While eating is natural, it’s a process to be learned. Eventually, we wean the babies onto bigger and bigger chunks, getting them onto “real food” when they can be trusted to ingest and digest it effectively. There’s a similar process for reading. When children are small, we make things very [...]
January 16
Planet Word
Those of you, like me, who are obsessed with Lord of Language Stephen Fry will know about Planet Word. The rest of you… crawl out from your ivory towers and educate yourselves! :) Planet Word is a BBC programme consisting of five episodes about language – *everything* about language. The programme covers subjects from dialects [...]
January 09
Vowels
This started out as a Lords of Language blog about Christian Bök, but I got severely distracted. While Bök definitely deserves a LofL blog, he’ll have to wait. I’ve been distracted by vowels. Seriously. While they seem small and insignificant, they’re actually very profound. I got distracted when I was re-reading parts of Eunoia, which [...]
January 02
Banished Words 2012
Lake Superior State University has published their list of banished words for the year. Comments can be left on their Facebook page. (Thank goodness someone is finally speaking out against “thanking you in advance”. ) So, what’s wrong with using a word often? Nothing… if it’s an article. Every other word should be used deliberately, [...]
December 27
Auld Lang Syne
Happy Holidays! Just a short little post today. The new year is creeping up (and is about to pounce); I’ve been thinking about “Auld Lang Syne” – that song we sing at midnight. Clearly, it’s not English, so why does everyone sing it? And what the heck does it mean? In true English form (i.e. [...]
December 19
Lords of Language: Shakespeare
As a general rule, I think it’s ridiculous that we still teach Shakespeare’s works in mandatory English classes, especially in high school where the students are not there voluntarily. Five-hundred-year-old plays and poems, written in what is essentially a foreign language, are not useful in daily life. As well, Shakespeare’s plays are not particularly “educational”: [...]
December 12
More Comma Rules: Too
I think it would be fair to say that it’s well-nigh impossible to learn *all* the comma rules. That said, you should probably give it a shot. It will, at least, make you less susceptible to grammar police and friends who would love to quote you on every social network available. Today’s comma rule involves [...]
About Author
I'm Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins. Currently, I am the primary blog
writer. Please feel free to contribute writing tips and ideas by
commenting on the blog entries.
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