Posts tagged English
40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation - Dumb Little Man
The very first item on this list, “A or AN?” answered questions I’ve had for ages.
I have to mention your misuse of the word “disinterested” as in, “Same old Spurs — they looked disinterested for a few months.” It means unbiased, not uninterested. People misuse it frequently, which grates on me, I guess because I’m a nerd. (Editor’s note for other “nerds” out there: The ESPN.com copy desk reports that while “disinterested” does mean “unbiased” as an adjective, when used as a verb the word does actually mean “not interested.”)
Impactful
Just learned that this is not a real word when spell-check busted me for using it.
When a family name (a proper noun) is pluralized, we almost always simply add an “s.” So we go to visit the Smiths, the Kennedys, the Grays, etc. When a family name ends in s, x, ch, sh, or z, however, we form the plural by added -es, as in the Marches, the Joneses, the Maddoxes, the Bushes, the Rodriguezes.
Do not form a family name plural by using an apostrophe; that device is reserved for creating possessive forms.
When a proper noun ends in an “s” with a hard “z” sound, we don’t add any ending to form the plural: “The Chambers are coming to dinner” (not the Chamberses); “The Hodges used to live here” (not the Hodgeses). There are exceptions even to this: we say “The Joneses are coming over,” and we’d probably write “The Stevenses are coming, too.
Who vs. Which vs. That
Here’s a grammar mistake I’ve been making my whole life. Going by what “sounds right” is right 99% of the time if you’re a native English speaker, but this rule can be broken without sounding wrong.
Um… I feel like “knowing how to spell ‘Jobs’ correctly” is a prerequisite for authority.
Factoid - Wiktionary
Once you know the real definition of factoid, it’ll always drive you crazy when people misuse it. Like a ticking clock when you’re trying to fall asleep.
I put the word “unique” in a similar category, because, once you concede that there aren’t shades of uniqueness, the word can’t be at all qualified. Something can’t be very unique or a little unique. I saw Nic Cage gets this wrong about 10 times in one interview, once.
How to use the semicolon properly
This is a common sense explanation of how the fancy punctuation really works; I’m glad I finally learned it in my thirties.
Apple's forces the use of the preposition "on" upon developers
This analysis starts out tongue-in-cheek, but becomes increasingly insightful. I’ve not seen this opinion expressed anywhere else, and I’m glad I came across it.
The Hyphen
In my ongoing effort to learn the rules of grammar I should’ve known cold for the last 25 years, this morning I tackled the hyphen. Here’s two rules you probably knew, but I didn’t:
- Hyphens are used to connect numbers and words in forming adjectival phrases (particularly with weights and measures), whether numerals or written out, as in 28-year-old woman (cf. twenty-eight-year-old woman) or 320-foot wingspan. Hyphens are also used in spelled-out fractions as adjectives (but not as nouns), such as two-thirds majority and one-eighth portion. Note, though, that for use with symbols for units—as opposed to the names of those units—both the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology reject this practice, thus a roll of 35-millimeter film, but not a 25-kg sphere.
- If an adverb can also function as an adjective, then a hyphen may be required for clarity. For example, the phrase more-important reasons (“reasons that are more important”) is distinguished from more important reasons (“additional important reasons”), where more is an adjective.
Boston’s toponymic roots
After enjoying a Duck Tour yesterday, focused largely on Boston’s history, I became interested in the origin of the city’s name. I knew it was named after a city in England, but I wanted more details.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I discovered that:
The name Boston is said to be a contraction of St Botolph’s town or of St Botolph’s stone. However, fewer people now believe the story, still current, that a settlement in Boston dates from AD 654, when a Saxon monk, named Botolph, established a monastery on the banks of the River Witham. One reason for doubting this is, that in 654, the Witham did not flow near the site of Boston. (The early medieval geography of The Fens was much more fluid than it is today). Botolph’s establishment is most likely to have been in Suffolk.
Three things intrigued me about this:
- The city’s named after something that didn’t happen.
- The original Boston has an area called “The Fens” (an old English phrase for swamps). My Boston has such an area too, which is why the baseball stadium, built in a swampy area of the city, is called Fenway.
- The actual site of the original “St Botolph’s stone ” was in Suffolk, which is the name of Boston’s county.
Why your argument sucks...
I’ve been really happy lately to discover that some of the funniest people I follow on Twitter are also hysterical on Tumblr. The link above comes from one such account.
Part of why I dug this post so much was that I was two credits away from a second major at Brown in “Logic” through the philosophy department, I often regret that I didn’t follow through, and I look for good discussions of the craft of logic wherever I can get them (ironically, the classes I needed to fulfill the degree weren’t logic classes, but early modern philosophy classes). I really enjoyed constructing and deconstructing arguments, and have found the practice quite useful in the “real world”.
The link above was largely borrowed from Wikipedia (without the intent to deceive), and, if you like this sort of thing, you should check out the great “see also” links at the bottom of that page, like common misconceptions.
Addictive Versus Addicting
My sister asked me last weekend when she should use “addicting” and when “addictive” was proper. My immediate response was that “addicting” wasn’t a real word, as “to addict” isn’t a transitive verb.
I looked it up, though, to see if I was right, and it turns out the topic’s up for debate, and that one out of the four dictionaries this author checked actually did list it as a transitive verb.
The main message is that “addictive” is never wrong, but some people believe “addicting” is right, too.
Vocab experiment
I picked up the word “curio” the other day from a friend, and it reminded me that I’d been meaning to re-commit to the site Wordie.org.
The site let’s you “collect” your favorite words, a concept I appreciate, and they have a mobile version of their site that makes it easy to add to your collection on the go.
I figured I’d add the feed to my word list to this site, so that words I discover will show up here in real time. The downside: the format of their feed is extremely spartan. In fact, it’s just the word, with no context. I apologize in advance for those confusing posts, but I still think it’s worth a shot.
One of these day’s, I’ll figure out Yahoo Pipes, and I’ll make my own feed that appends the word’s definition to each post.
Vocab experiment over
I can’t deal with the way the words look on my site out of context. It must be even more annoying for a reader.
I’d love something that would aggregate all my words throughout a week and post once, with definitions, but, until I learn Yahoo Pipes, that’s not gonna happen.
- Page 1 of 2
- Next »
