Our client documents often have names of famous places incorrectly presented. This week's post covers how to properly punctuate names of places and structures. Names of buildings, architecturally or historically significant houses, thoroughfares, monuments, and the like are capitalized. An introductory the, even if part of the name, is not capitalized in running text.
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A common question we've received is about when to use "lay/lie/laid/laying". In this post we cover the differences. Hope it helps to answer your questions.
Many of our blog article topics are inspired by common mistakes we see in documents. Today's post is all about adverbs and participles.
Topics: hyphenation, participles, adverbs
Most readers know that superscript figures (usually numbers or asterisks) in text tell the reader to refer to a footnote or an endnote for a comment or a source reference. So informative writers of white papers and such will want to use superscript characters here and there to build up their credibility.
Topics: superscript, footnotes, punctuation
The bandage was wound around the wound. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. After a number of injections, my jaw got number. Any wonder why English is so hard to learn? How well will you do on this week's vocabulary test?
Topics: word test, vocabulary test
From time to time, even the most science-averse writers must cover a scientific term in writing. For example, is it Fahrenheit or fahrenheit? Is it Celsius and Centigrade, or celsius and centigrade? While there are several authoritative guides that should be found on the shelves of all science writers (The AIP Style Manual, Physical Review Letters, Astrophysical Journal, and The ACS Style Guide for chemists), the following are some general guidelines for nontechnical editors.
Topics: scientific terms
Idiom is language peculiar to a people or to a district, community, or class. It's also an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically (as no, it wasn't me) or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (as Monday week for "the Monday a week after next Monday").
Topics: preposition, prepositions, idioms
We're not talking about those parking spots in old-timey towns in America. We're talking about that 'slash' character (/) found on most keyboards to the right of the period. It's also known as virgule, solidus, slant, or forward slash, to distinguish it from a backward slash, or backslash (\).
Topics: slash
The notion that ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatical heresy was originally advanced more than three centuries ago by the venerated English poet and essayist John Dryden. Dryden, a Latin scholar, based his view on the fact that prepositions are never found at the end of sentences written in Latin. And given Dryden's reputation, it is no surprise that his sentiments forged their way into the grammar texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and eventually into the grammar classrooms of the twentieth century.
Topics: preposition, prepositions, preposition at end of sentence
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