Writing style can be viewed as a spectrum, with material such as legislation at one end and teen-text at the other. It’s important to recognize the wide variation in styles and to be able to choose and use the correct one. Written communication is not as effective as face-to-face because body language and tone of […]
Month – December 2015
Contractions Are a Pain
This week’s topic is the erroneous use of “of” after should, would, could and might. (Did I miss any?) If you can’t see anything wrong with the following… I would of written this article yesterday if I could of, but I did not have the time. I should of been at a band rehearsal but […]
The Life Cycle of Hyphenation
Gosh – doesn’t that title sound riveting? Believe it or not (if you’re not a pedant, you likely won’t), people argue online about whether phrases such as “life cycle” should be written as one word, two words, or hyphenated. Normal people would just say, “Get a life!” and move on, but they don’t know what […]
Dash It—Who Knew?
How is it that something as unassuming as a punctuation mark can cause so much grief for so many people? The apostrophe is perhaps the biggest cause of grief, but the numerous variations of dash and hyphen must come a close second. For me personally, they cause more pauses—for thought—than the apostrophe. Before we go […]
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