If you’re reading this blog, then you’ll be happy to know that we have our own day. The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG), has designated March 4th National Grammar Day. The Society says it’s for ‘pen-toters appalled by wanton displays of Bad English’ and for ‘people who crave good, clean English’. We … Read more
Below you will find the most popular articles of the past month. Check them out if you missed any. Laugh About Writing: Writing doesn’t always have to be a serious business. Though it’s wise to make sure that you write correctly, there’s a lot of fun to be had when playing with words. Poll: Should … Read more
Writing doesn’t always have to be a serious business. Though it’s wise to make sure that you write correctly, there’s a lot of fun to be had when playing with words. Two emails that landed in my inbox the other day made me chuckle. The first was called Humor for Lexophiles. I won’t reproduce the … Read more
Below you will find the most popular posts of this month. Check them out if you missed any. Give me an “A”: a vs. an: The indefinite articles a and an both mean the same thing. The definite article the refers to a particular thing (”Give me the ring! The wedding ring!”) while a and … Read more
English Grammar 101: Sentences, Clauses and Phrases: Welcome to English Grammar 101, the newest category on Daily Writing Tips. I thought that creating a series of posts covering the basic grammar rules and parts of speech would be useful to many people, especially if you consider the diversity of our readership. On this first post … Read more
It was about time to get our wonderful readers involved with the blog. Instead of writing an article with one hand, therefore, let’s group our knowledge and see what comes out of it. The topic I want to cover is “Tips to Become a Better Writer.” All you need to do is to send one … Read more
If you want to convince young people to do something, do you write for young people? Or do you write for people whom young people listen to? Years ago, people thought of communications as a hypodermic needle or a magic bullet. Prepare your message and shoot it into your audience. One problem with that approach … Read more
Gross Writing Errors Found on the Web: That being said, a little attention toward correct spelling and basic grammar rules couldn’t hurt, right? Below you will find some curious, to say the least, errors that we gathered on the Web. 8 Proofreading Tips And Techniques: Whether you are writing a magazine article, a college essay … Read more
I am glad to finally release the first test on this blog, the DWT Vocabulary Test 1. The idea of creating tests and quizzes was bouncing in my head for some time already. Such resources add interactivity to the content, and they integrate perfectly with the topics we already cover routinely. The vocabulary tests will … Read more
Whenever you encounter another culture, each culture takes something from the other. So it is with English and Japanese. Each language has borrowed from the other. In the case of English, there’s a long list of borrowings. Some of these have no direct English equivalent and describe inherently Japanese concepts. Others come from Japanese via … Read more
Opinions are divided on the origin of the expression ‘on the QT’, a slang expression which indicates that the subject under discussion is confidential. Most people agree that it’s simply an abbreviation of ‘quiet’, albeit a strange one, using the first and last letters. However, both the US and the UK claim first ownership of … Read more
The English language is a thief. What we call English isn’t really English at all. Instead, it’s a collection of borrowings from other languages. Latin is the main one, but there’s also a good bit of French and a healthy serving of Spanish. There are thousands of Spanish loan words in English – some claim … Read more