Every time I use they as a singular pronoun in one of my entries, someone posts a comment, or emails me, scolding me for my grammatical error. My response? I (politely) tell them to get over it. Granted, multiple grammatical strategies are available for people to identify someone with a personal pronoun, each of which … Read more
OK, like, OMG, I’m totally not bagging on you for tweeting or FBing or blogging these words, but they are so bogus in formal writing. LOL 1. Amirite This trendy favorite of commenters on pop-culture Web sites, meant to suggest a glibly tossed “Am I right?” — I figured that out after initially wondering what … Read more
A recent CNN article heralded and lamented the death of cursive handwriting (known by other names as well outside the United States), using handwritten notes from teenage heartthrobs to signal the demise of Western civilization. Like most people in my generation, I learned cursive writing in school, and I was a fair hand at it, … Read more
One of life’s great ironies for writers is that they spend their high school and college years padding essays and papers because an instructor requires a minimum word count. In the struggle to reach a 500-word or 1,000-word or 5,000-word lower limit, hurried, harried students facing a looming deadline will burden their assignments with prolix … Read more
I was reading the jacket copy for Garner’s Modern American Usage, the successor to the similarly titled classic reference work by H.W. Fowler, when I found what I felt to be an ironic instance: an error. The book’s description refers to its attention to “questions . . . of word-choice.” Whenever I see hyphenated compound … Read more
Are you confused about the language of gender identity? As we learned from a recent post about ethnic identity, the best way to learn what words to use to distinguish one or more people by their physical characteristics is to ask them. Unfortunately, this approach is not as easy as it seems. Those who wish … Read more
One day, you’re going to write that novel that’s been tugging at your sleeve. One day, you’re going to start posting regularly on your blog. One day, you’re going to finish that ebook you started. One day… Trust me, I know how you feel. For years, I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t … Read more
If you read the comments on this site, you know that DailyWritingTips.com is a collaborative enterprise: I post, and visitors correct me. But, seriously, visitors’ comments are a valuable part of the experience, and you are encouraged to weigh in with your experiences, opinions, and insights. My posts are based on my experience as a … Read more
Prepositions, words that indicate relations between nouns, pronouns, and verbs (mostly small ones like for, in, of, on, to, and with but sometimes more substantial, as in the case of beneath or between), are often integral to a sentence, but writers can clutter sentences by being overly dependent on them. Here are five strategies for … Read more
You know, of course, that a phrasal adjective, or compound modifier — two or more words that combine to modify a noun — are usually hyphenated to signal that link (only before the noun, however, and not if, as with “income tax” and many other permanent compounds, the open compound is in the dictionary). Even … Read more
Do you have your own blog or Web site, or are you responsible for the site of another individual or an organization or company? If so, remember that the medium is (also) the message — how the information is presented affects how it is received. So, to help site visitors engage with your content, consider … Read more
How much time and effort should a writer put into consistency? And how much energy should an editor devote to it? The answer, as with many editorial issues, is not that simple, but it is easy to elucidate. A book or a book-length publication, such as an extensive report, must for the sake of a … Read more