Grammar Source

Bring your curiosity and questions about English and let's find answers

About

A site to help make English grammar more understandable without dumbing down either its significance or its usage.

Archive for January, 2008

Using (and Misusing) the Colon

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

A lot of people get confused about where and how to use the colon.  For instance, some people will place a colon after a verb to introduce things that follow, as in: "The four reasons are: greed, anger, stupidty and laziness."  However, here’s a tidy little rule to remember:  Never use a colon after a verb, [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Group Anoints ‘Subprime’ Word of the Year

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

I never knew there was an American Dialect Society (do they use there for their?), nor did I know anyone went around dubbing words of the year. However, the American Dialect Society just proclaimed subprime its Word of the Year. (Subprime, of course, refers to real estate loans made to people who really can’t afford [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Serious, Funny Video Subdomains Added

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

I’ve added two subdomains to my site, both of which are self-updating.  In other words, as new videos are posted out in cyberspace, the script controlling my sites will automatically update the content. One site looks at English lessons, and it’s found at EnglishVids.GrammarSucks.com. The other takes a look at the foibles and follies of [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

What’s Wrong With This Phrase?

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

In describing one of the contestants (I think it was Wolfgang Puck) on Iron Chef America, Alton Brown said the chef was always "reinventing new ingredients." Anything wrong with that expression? A couple of things are off here.  For one, you can’t reinvent something that’s new; you can only invent something that’s new.  For another, you can’t invent food [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

I received this file via e-mail from a list to which I belong.  I reluctantly read it, but it turns out that A New YOU Year is full of great advance to help you advance yourself in 2008.

Read the rest of this entry »

UR What U Rite, or ur what u rite

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

Happy New Year’s and welcome to 2008, everyone. I see that the use of English continues to degenerate into some electronic media-driven abortion of its beautiful person. Probably, most if not all of you heard of the tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day that left one 17-year-old dead. We certainly all [...]

Read the rest of this entry »