10 Points About Possessives

Writers are often challenged by the details of producing singular and possessive forms, but dealing with less common possessive variations can be downright vexing. Here are guidelines about additional possessive constructions.

Shift Syntax to Strengthen Sentences

English syntax is flexible, enabling writers to shape a given sentence in various ways, and we should take advantage of this lack of rigidity to enhance the impact of our statements. Here are several sentences that benefit from rearrangement.

The Rationale for the Serial Comma

Do you employ a serial comma — the final comma in a sentence such as “I bought one apple, two bananas, and three oranges”?

What Is a Clause?

A clause is a statement or a question that generally consists of a subject and a verb phrase and constitutes a complete thought. Sentences can consist of a single clause, but they often include two: a main, or independent, clause and a subordinate, or dependent, clause.

The Reality of Freelance Writing

A recent Craigslist job posting invites readers to apply to write twenty or more 1,000-word online-marketing articles per week. The pay rate? Twenty dollars per article to start, thirty dollars each after the first ten articles, and forty or fifty dollars apiece after a couple of weeks.

45 Synonyms for “Old” and “Old-Fashioned”

Our culture’s attitude toward age is reflected in the often-pejorative meanings of words synonymous with old and old-fashioned, though some are neutral or even reverent. Here are forty-five words that refer to people, places, and things that are, or are considered, old or old-fashioned. (Unrelated senses are also listed.)

How to Pitch an Essay

Do you have something in writing you’d like to share with the world? Not a complete book manuscript, perhaps, but musings of a concise nature? Perhaps you like to explain things, or share your opinion, or tell a story or write humorous pieces.

Answers to Questions About Tense

Here are several readers’ queries about various aspects of tense, and my responses.

10 Functions of the Comma

A comma is a versatile punctuation mark, serving ten basic functions. Here’s an enumeration, with examples.

What Is a Determiner?

Among lists of parts of speech, you may see an unfamiliar word among nouns, verbs, conjunctions, and the other usual suspects. What’s a determiner?

What’s the Best Way to Refer to a Romantic Partner?

One of the oddities of the English language is that though many words have multiple synonyms, and we have words for many things we rarely refer to, one of the most ubiquitous concepts in American society has no name: There’s no ideal term for an unmarried party in a romantic relationship.

Capitonyms Are Separate Cases

Some words, in a class called capitonyms, have distinct meanings or senses when they are capitalized as opposed to generic senses. Writers should take care to render these words as appropriate to the context.

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