Among the scores of verbose constructions that can be whittled down (usually) to one word with no loss of, and often with a net gain in, clarity are those phrases in the following sentences beginning with in. The replacement words are not necessarily the only (or the best) choices, and the sentences could be further … Read more
Oxymoron, a Greek term combining the words for “sharp” and “foolish,” has been adopted in English to refer to inadvertently contradictory or incongruous mash-ups of terms such as “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp” — a class known as subjective oxymora (that latter word is the pedantic-looking plural) because they are not literally at odds with … Read more
It’s Saturday, so instead of our usual writing tip we’ll have some fun. The image below appeared on Deborah Ng’s Google+ (Google’s social network) stream yesterday. Nice huh? For those who can’t see the image, the first line says: “Let’s eat grandma!”. The second line says: “Let’s eat, grandma!”. And the conclusion: “Punctuation saves lives!”. … Read more