GrammarPhile Blog

Top 5 Grammar Tips

Posted by Sara Richmond   Mar 24, 2022 7:30:00 AM

PRN_Blogpost_03242022-1-1The Hottest Topics from the PRN Archives

You’re a busy person. Like most people, you want value and convenience, and you want it 3.74 seconds before you thought about it. To that aim, we’ve gathered the Top 5 ProofreadNOW.com blog posts by view count over the past year. These are the topics our readers found the most helpful compiled into a single extremely convenient and bursting-with-grammatical-value list:

  1. Who vs. Whom: The Easy Way to Remember.
    If you’re preparing for a first date, an interview, or a highfalutin get-together, may we suggest adding this post to the pre-event menu? It’s a quick read with surefire tips that are easy to digest. Before you know it, you’ll be tossing out “whom” with aplomb. The second date (or interview) is in the bag!

  2. When to Capitalize North, South, East, and West.
    In the words of my 7-year-old, “Is north up?” Compass directions are hard enough to decipher, much less capitalize correctly. While we can’t promise it includes a course on navigation, this blog post will at least clear up the confusion over when to use, as my aforementioned 7-year-old would say, “big first letters” or “small first letters.” Easy peasy.

  3. If I Were or If I Was: Which Is Correct?
    If you think the “subjunctive” is the gross stuff you find under a trash heap, this post is definitely for you. If you hear people use “If he were a tortoise…” and wonder whether they’re crazy because a.) What? and b.) You thought “was” was the right word, then this post is for you. If you use “were” and “was” interchangeably, as in, “We were happy together…yes, we was so happy together,” then this post is for you.

  4. Acronyms, Initialisms, and Abbreviations. There are some key differences between these three, and some people don’t learn them until they’re well into adulthood. Perhaps “some people” are ashamed to admit that. Perhaps “some people” is really just me. Let’s move on quickly, but not before you become a quick expert on the subject. Click the link. Resistance is futile or my name isn’t S.R. (guess which one that is?).

  5. Misused Words. We admit, this is a conglomerate, based on the fact that misused words can’t possibly be covered in a single blog post (unless we were going for the longest-ever blog post in the history of driving people crazy). This link will take you to a pop-up menu listing all the misused words-related posts on our site, including puzzlers such as:

-Lay or lie
-Incidence versus incidents
-Regime versus regimen
-Beg the question
-Nonplussed
-Comprise versus compose
-Fewer and less
-Compare to and compare with
-Connote and denote
-Travesty
-Compelled
-Everyday versus every day

If you’ve puzzled over an unwieldy word or phrase, we’ve probably written about it. Don’t shy away from that search box to the right. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, let us know so we can write about it!

Those five were dinner; here’s dessert. Try your luck with these fun quizzes (and if your luck is terrible, stick on our site longer to learn more from our blog posts and other resources).

Proud of your score? Embarrassed and want to share your shame? Post a comment below. We love talking shop with our readers.

 

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Topics: grammar

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