March 4th is National Grammar Day! While this may not be up there with Thanksgiving or Halloween, it is certainly a day of the year you should pay attention to. If you do nothing else – thank your editor today! What is National Grammar Day? National Grammar Day began in 2008 and was started…
Did you know that National Grammar Day and National Proofreading Day both fall in March? And there’s no need to wait until their observance days to celebrate them! Grammar and proofreading deserve to be celebrated all 365 days a year, especially in the fields of communication and technical writing. National Grammar Day National Grammar Day…
One of our readers asked us how to write the term we use for electronic mail: hyphen or no hyphen? The short answer is this: Either is correct. Just choose one and be consistent. It seems that the original spelling was e-mail, but the spelling has evolved into the shorter form that does not use…
When it comes to quotation marks, the rules for British usage are, for the most part, the opposite of the rules for American usage, as shown in the table below:
Unlike many of our Timely Tips, this tip isn’t to tell you how these words are different and how to use them correctly. Instead, I am here to tell you that these words mean the same thing. Surprised? So was I! I’ve always assumed that there were occasions, grammatically speaking or otherwise, when you needed…
What do you usually say when you aren’t feeling well? Do you say, “I feel bad”? If you write, “I feel badly,” you are in essence saying that your sense of feel is not working correctly. If you write, “I feel bad,” you may be saying that you are sick. So you say “I feel…
Regardless of how good you are at grammar, hyphens can be a pain. Here is the rule for using the prefix ‘re’ with or without a hyphen: Use a hyphen with ‘re’ if it meets both of these conditions: 1. ‘Re’ means again. 2. Omitting the hyphen from the word would cause the reader to confuse it…
It’s amazing how many people use these two words incorrectly. Principal is the name that you give the person who is in charge of an elementary or secondary school. He—or she—is the ‘main one.’ That’s what principal means. So whether you are talking about the administrator in a school or you are trying to point…
A few years ago I was chastened by a client who informed me that the word ‘once’ means ‘one time,’ and it should not be used to mean anything other than that. He was so adamant about it that I didn’t bother to look it up. I have heard this admonition more than once (in fact, several…
Yes, Virginia, You CAN Put Tabs in a Table! You may already know this, but it’s new to me. I have found that if I try to ‘Tab’ within a table, Word just takes me to the next cell in the table. If I am at the end of the table, pressing ‘Tab’ adds a…