The bounds of civility seem to be eroding faster than a sandcastle in a tsunami. Nowhere is this more evident than in social media. Any public forum in which readers can comment on another’s posting has become fertile ground for nit-picking, tongue-lashings, biting sarcasm and just plain rudeness — and more frequently, grammar bashing.
Topics: grammar, correcting grammar
Here's a small collection of miscellaneous rules for grammar. Perhaps one will be something you can use in the next ten minutes.
Topics: possessives, punctuation, grammar
You’re probably thinking “What does that title mean and what does it have to do with grammar and punctuation and writing?” Well, today, I thought I’d take a little break from our standard posts. I don’t know about you, but with summer almost here I know I’m starting to look forward to long hot summer days and some vacation time. So, here’s a post from a lighter side.
Topics: sentences, documents, punctuation, grammar, pronouns, verbs
Here are some questions we've received from readers and clients, followed by our answers. Hope you find these helpful!
Question: Would you hyphenate "we must perform our work with a high-level of technical expertise, professionalism, and integrity"?
Answer: In this example, there should be no hyphen in "high level" - that's because it is not a compound adjective. "Level" is a noun that is modified by "high."
Now, if you take out the word "of" there, then "high-level" becomes a compound adjective and it IS hyphenated. "We need high-level expertise in order to compete."
More examples:
Question: It is my understanding that abbreviations such as "etc., i.e., and e.g." are only used parenthetically, if at all. Why not simply write "and so forth, that is, and for example"?
Answer: Yes, why not use "that is" and "for example"? Well, sometimes people want to be quicker with their writing, so abbreviations are brought in. Some clients of ours have in their style guides prohibitions on using these abbreviations, but most people rely on them, we see.
The biggest trouble we see with them is when writers confuse them, using "i.e." when they mean "e.g." And in British form, neither takes a comma, whereas in American form, both take commas.
Style guides say it's a matter of personal preference. We'd never change "for example" to "e.g." in a client document, and we'd only change "e.g." to "for example" if the style guide directed us to.
Question: What's the rule for writing the name of a newsletter--italicized or underlined?
Answer: Chicago style (Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition) has this:
CMS8.2: Chicago prefers italics to set off titles of major or freestanding works such as books, journals, movies, and paintings...Quotation marks are usually reserved for the titles of subsections of larger works--including chapter and article titles and the titles of poems that have been collected into a series.
Chicago does not use underlining at all, apparently.
So, we suggest putting a newsletter title in italics.
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Topics: hyphenation, italicize, adjectives, abbreviations, grammar, Chicago Manual of Style
The following guest post was written by one of our former editors, Lynnette Goldy. Here's an example of something that really gets Lynnette steaming!
Topics: grammar
Everyone remembers that childhood game, right? The one where you couldn’t take a step forward unless you asked the game leader, “Mother, May I?” Funny how we were grammatical as children, but we lost that ability as we aged.
Topics: misused words, word usage, grammar
We receive lots of grammar and punctuation questions from customers and visitors to our site. This week, I thought I'd post a question we received about quotations along with Phil Jamieson's answer. In coming weeks, I'll post some of the other questions we've received along with their answers.
Topics: quotations, business writing, punctuation, grammar
The following is a guest post written by Kyle Simpson.
Topics: spelling, grammar, writing style, vocabulary
I recently had a conversation with Rick Roberge who told me what a great service our company provides. Rick, a sales coach and trainer, said he believes that every salesperson who writes proposals, e-mails, letters, etc., should incorporate proofreading as a standard part of their business writing process. Rick then went on to write a blog post about this topic.
Topics: writing guidelines, business writing, proofreading, proposals, grammar, writing style, writing
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