A site to help make English grammar more understandable without dumbing down either its significance or its usage.
Two of the great artists of the 20th century–filmmaker [tag]Ingmar Bergman[/tag] and football innovator [tag]Bill Walsh[/tag]–both passed away on the same day, Monday, July 30, 2007. Football is still being played the Bill Walsh way, and films these days never have the emotional depth or meaning that Berman was able to instill in his repertoire. [...]
This falls into the category of "out of the mouths of old farts (me)." Whenever I take my dog for a car ride, he goes absolutely bonkers, eliciting this shrill howl at the sight of every animal, be it bird, cat, dog, squirrel or hunched-over human. The shrill sound is actually ear-piercing, and while he shreiks [...]
In English, of course. Now, I didn’t compile this list; I’m just linking to a site called “100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English,” which I discovered when I was preparing to write a Building Blocks of English entry on phrases. I’ll get to the phrases explanation over the weekend, but enjoy the list. [...]
Match Up Match each word in the left column with its synonym on the right. When finished, click Answer to see the results. Good luck! NOTE: This stays permanently at the top, and my daily posts appear right below this. Match Up provided by The Free Dictionary
We’ve all seen those cheesy Las Vegas ads that tout the benefits of having sex in Sin City (as if you can’t have it anywhere else and as if your spouse/significant other doesn’t care that you go to L.V. by youself or with a circle of horny friends). The ad saying is: "What happens here, [...]
From the Los Angeles Times Sports section, Tuesday, July 24, 2007: Vick told to not go to camp. Bad grammar, because in truth he was told not to go, which is correct English. Putting the not before go split the infinitive, to go. And worse, it’s not even the correct meaning, though to most ears [...]
One of my students in an online writing class enquired whether she should use only "unbiased sources" for her references. I replied in the negative, saying that "there’s no such thing as unbiased writing." Now, the terms objective writing and objective reporting came about when newspaper owners and editors realized what partisan rags their products had [...]
I just graded a pile of papers for a writing class, and I can’t tell you how many students wrote now days when they meant nowadays. Is this because of faulty hearing, faulty pronunication, or just faulty learning of English words? I mean, nowadays could sound like now days depending upon how the person pronounces [...]
I’m so lousy at effectively using body language that I usually end up sending the exact opposite message of what I’m trying to say. I guess this reveals something about the inner me that comes through when I’m speaking with others. Or maybe it’s just that I look like Richard Nixon (one of the many [...]
Yesterday, I discussed the importance of being able to, and knowing when to, combine and separate independent clauses. Usually, it’s obvious when two independent clauses need to stand alone as unique sentences, but people will still try either to pack too much into one sentence or to use too many sentences (and words) when they [...]