Choice Words
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Microsoft Word: To Trust or Not to Trust [with your grammar]
*This post originally appeared on my previous blog on November 20, 2014 and has been updated/revised [Disclaimer: The word processor I refer to is Microsoft Word 2013, on my Windows Surface Tablet which runs on Windows 8.] I follow a company called Grammarly – if you haven’t heard of it, that’s okay, you have now so go check them out! Back? Great. I follow Grammarly because I like the witty cartoons, links, and other content they post that focuses on grammar and spelling errors. When visiting their page, you may have discovered their main event: a grammar checker, which boasts to “correct up to 10 times more mistakes than popular word processors.” Well, I primarily use…
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The It’s Its Dilemma
*This post originally appeared on my previous blog on January 28, 2015 I remember when I learned the difference between “it’s” and “its.” No, really, I remember. I was in first grade, and had used “it’s” instead of “its.” After an explanation from my teacher, I was amazed at how much an apostrophe could change the meaning of a word and sentence. Now, as I peruse social media, read text messages, edit copy, and go through my emails, I realize that not everyone was given, or paid attention to, an explanation of the difference between “it’s” and “its.” Well, here’s your chance. “It’s” is a easily recognizable…
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Seasonal Pluralization & Other Errors
‘Tis the season for bookish gifts, literary awards, and pluralization troubles. Greeting cards and holiday imagery are usually littered with seasonal sentiments and last name conundrums – so today we will get to the bottom of common mistakes made with plural (and non-plural) titles as well as other errors. When used in a sentence, the “merry” before Christmas is usually incorrectly capitalized: We wish you a Merry Christmas! We wish you a merry Christmas! The same goes for New Year’s Day and Eve: Have a safe and Happy New Year! Have a safe and happy New Year! Of course, the argument can be made for capitalizing all the words on a…
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A Word on Contractions
*This post originally appeared on my previous blog on October 31, 2014 Don’t, won’t, can’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t, it’s (which will have a post of *its* own), and more. I believe in high school I was told it was better to use two words than one contraction. If I remember correctly, I did not use one contraction in any of my college application essays. This practice varied throughout my college career, and while now I prefer not to use contractions, I don’t completely avoid them. Many people, if not most, use contractions when they speak and write. But is this wrong? According to the AP Style Guide and the Chicago Manual of…
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Word? Image? Phrase? Pictograph – of the Year
As you may have heard, the Oxford Dictionaries released 2015’s Word of the Year. Or, more accurately, the first ever pictograph of the year. The “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji is one I have used in texts and on social media, and I have to admit I respect the reasoning behind choosing an emoji, and this emoji in particular, for the Word of the Year: because it is “the ‘word’ that best reflect[s] the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015” based on statistical evidence that shows it is the most internationally used emoji. To justify the selection further, the Oxford Dictionaries research also shows that overall emoji usage has been increasing over…
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A or An ?
Today I’m featuring another post I published on my previous blog one year ago. The post has aged, but the lesson is timeless. *This originally appeared on my previous blog on November 5th, 2014 Today, while I was catching up on episodes of The Tonight Show (hey, I’m doing that now!) and eating lunch, I opened this game on my phone – it’s called Compulsive – and was browsing its features. I clicked on the “Awards Page” and a hover over one of the awards produced the image shown below. First of all, an app/smartphone game that gives the user an award – that cannot be put on a resume, mind…
