DailyWritingTips

September 2007 Most Popular Posts

Latin Words and Expressions: All You Need to Know: Even though Latin is considered a dead language (no country officially speaks it), its influence upon other languages makes it still important. Latin words and expressions are present in virtually all the languages around the world, as well as on different scientific and academic fields. The … Read more

Titled versus Entitled

Another day I was browsing around the Internet and I came across this sentence: You might want to check out this great article that I found; it is entitled “bla bla bla.” But was the article really entitled? There is a common confusion between the words titled and entitled. Titled would have been the correct … Read more

No More Used Cars

Time was, a car that no longer belonged to its original owner was a “used car.” Clothing that had changed hands was “second-hand clothing” or, in a family, “hand me downs.” Not anymore. Apparently, in our consumer society, thrift is still practiced, but admitting to it is not cool. Old clothes are now sold in … Read more

The Art Of Writing News

News writing is a key skill for journalists, but it helps with other types of writing as well. That’s because news writing is about telling a story quickly and concisely. Anyone can learn to do this, with a bit of help. Here’s how you can write the news and get your story across. The technique … Read more

Writing for Your Audience

I’m an editor and moderator at Toasted Cheese, a literary magazine and writing community. Recently, one of our members posted a question that I thought was worth addressing here. He’d turned in a college paper, and his professor told him he needed to “create more distance from the reader.” It all comes down, I think, … Read more

Latin Words and Expressions: All You Need to Know

Even though Latin is considered a dead language (no country officially speaks it), its influence upon other languages makes it still important. Latin words and expressions are present in virtually all the languages around the world, as well as on different scientific and academic fields. Below you will find a list with the most used … Read more

Punctuation Errors: Multiple Punctuation Marks

Sometime ago Maeve wrote a brilliant post titled “Let the Word do the Work.” On the article she was manifesting hes despair towards the common use of redundancies like “return back” or “speeding too fast.” The conclusion is straight forward: it’s as if people don’t trust a word to mean what it means. The same … Read more

Word of the Day: Turmoil

Turmoil (tûr’moil’), the verb, means to harass or to disturb. It is more widely used as a noun, however, where it means a state of confusion, agitation or tumult. A labor strike, for instance, can create turmoil inside a country. Even the people most at fault for the recent turmoil—the creators of the collateralised-debt obligations … Read more

CAUTION: Merging Words

The lines between some word pairs like suit and suite, motive and motif, are beginning to blur. Here are six such pairs that may be worth your attention. 1. suit/suite As a noun, suit can be a suit of clothing or a legal action. Card players speak of the suits of hearts, spades, diamonds, and … Read more

Battle of the Dictionaries

In commenting on the article Forte or Fortë, Cache or Cachet?, Geoff Foster points out that the Oxford American Dictionary on his Mac supports the /fortay/ pronunciation of forte (in the sense of “strong point). He also implies that the same dictionary gives a pronunciation for another French borrowing, cadre, that ignores the /r/ sound. … Read more

The Six Spellings of “Long E”

Some of you have had the opportunity to attend, but we wanted our members to have a sneak peak at what they have to offer. The above quotation is from a club announcement. The words “sneak peak” certainly seem as if they ought to match, but the word “peak” is a misspelling in this context. … Read more

“Forte” or “Fortë,” “Cache” or “Cachet”?

How many times have you heard people say something is not their “forte” and pronounce forte as /for tay/? This mispronunciation has become so wide-spread that it’s on its way to establishing itself as an acceptable variation. The error has arisen from the fact that there are two “fortes” in English, each with a different … Read more