If you are traveling down the often bumpy road of becoming a Grammar Geek (or Goddess), you may be frustrated by the following sentence: The attendee left their briefcase in the auditorium. Unless you are talking about one attendee leaving a briefcase that belongs to more than one person, this sentence is grammatically incorrect. Let’s…
Your high school English teacher probably taught you that splitting an infinitive is an earth-shattering offense. Let’s straighten this out right now. Sometimes it is okay! “And what is an infinitive?” you (might) ask. An infinitive is the bare form of a verb with the preposition ‘to’ in front of it (e.g., to eat, to…
When you are writing or editing for a British company, it’s important to remember that some spelling rules change when you cross the Atlantic. To be safe, however, ask before you edit spellings, as some companies use a mixture of both! -or Color Labor Favorite -our· Colour· Labour· Favourite -er· Center· Theater· Kilometer -re· Centre·…
The word or phrase Why it’s nonstandard Say this instead Irregardless The prefix Ir- and suffix -less both mean ‘without,’ making ‘irregardless’ a one-word double negative. Regardless Impact (as a verb) Shortening ‘has an impact on’ to ‘impact’ is a sign of laziness. Some nouns just aren’t ready to be verbs. Affect Conversate Chopping the -ion…
The verbs ‘assure,’ ‘insure,’ and ‘ensure’ share a similar meaning-“to make certain or secure.” They aren’t completely interchangeable, though. Learning their differences will ensure your company’s assurance in your ability to insure documents against mistakes. Assure-to build confidence or remove stress. He assured her that everything was fine. Insure-to protect against financial loss or to…
You can quickly calculate values based on numbers in a selection in a Word document. For instance, you could highlight text such as 14*7+7 and quickly calculate that the answer is 105. To add a button for calculating numbers, to the Quick Access Toolbar, follow these steps if you are using Word 2007: 1. Click…
Creating a Custom Shortcut Key Most symbols or commands have shortcut keys assigned to them. For example, Ctrl + C copies selected text, while Ctrl + V pastes it. But you can set your own shortcut for any command using whatever keys you like. For Word 2003: 1. Under ‘Tools,’ click ‘Customize.’ 2. Click the…
Sometimes, it’s not what you say, but how many pages you take to say it. In the event that you have a page limit and don’t wish to change your wording, there are a few ways to further ‘scrunch’ your lines without sacrificing readability. Reduce the font size of blank lines between paragraphs. Replace superscripts…
How many times should we tap the space bar after a sentence-ending period? The Chicago Manual of Style says only once, though some writers may have learned to use two spaces. The two-space rule was a product of mechanical typewriters, which gave each letter the same amount of space. Letters, words, and sentences flowed uniformly…
Craig Lamison of KBR has asked an interesting question: Why do we say, “The boat is 100 feet long,” but alternatively say, “It was a 100-foot boat”? First, according to Alred’s Handbook of Technical Writing, When we write about measurements, we should always express the units of measurement as numerals. If the measurement is one…