Have you ever talked to a person who used finger quotes incessantly, often times incorrectly?
Excessive and unnecessary use of quotation marks in writing is just as bad, if not doubly annoying.  I for one cannot fathom how the practice of over-using quotation marks in texts began.  Might it have been a side effect of the Ice Age, or was it the very cause of the dinosaurs’ demise?
If anything, it’s something worth pointing out lest you be annoying all your readers (and friends) unwittingly.  So drop that quotation mark, serial offender, …

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As you know, I was very, very lucky to receive a signed copy of June Casagrande’s Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs — Even If You’re Right.
Pretty long title right there, whew!
But the incredibly long title aside, I have to say the book is quite unlike the usual grammar guides we find in stores. Stuffy really isn’t a word you can use to describe Mortal Syntax, given …

Despite its seeming simplicity, a lot of people still can’t figure out how to use the apostrophe properly. You’ll be surprised how so many people still get mixed up when it comes to this simple punctuation mark. How many times have you seen someone type “salad green’s” instead of “salad greens”?
I know it seems confusing (though it most definitely isn’t), but using the apostrophe really shouldn’t be so difficult. Just remember these few important guidelines to using the apostrophe properly:
1. Apostrophes are used to show possession.

ex. clothes …

I know it’s supposed to be the easiest thing in the world to use the past tense of verbs, but I’ve seen a few examples that remind me it isn’t. A lot of people still tend to make mistakes when using the past tense form of some verbs, especially the irregular ones.
And I’m not even referring to the other, more complicated versions of the past tense form. I’ve actually come across people having difficulties with simple past tense.
Why is it important to learn the proper way of using …

Certainly one of the most overused punctuation marks on the internet, a lot of bloggers and forum participants tend to use the ellipsis to show transition from one thought to another. Whereas the correct mark to use is the period or a comma, the punctuation mark of choice of most netizens is still the ellipsis. I must admit that there is a certain allure to the ellipsis. It exudes mystery and signals the unknown. The ellipsis is the harbinger of surprise — there is almost always …

For casual students of English grammar, there’s a set of hard and fast rules no writer can ever hope to escape. A singular noun must be paired with a singular verb; the Subject-Verb Agreement is the backbone of every sentence. To break these grammatical rules is tantamount to blasphemy and could easily send a writer to pariah status in the blink of an eye.
True, a lot of grammatical rules are here to stay. You still can’t go around passing off phrases as sentences, and — as far …

I’m very, very fond of the semi-colon, despite the fact that few people can figure out how to use it. After all, it doesn’t seem quite as necessary as the comma, which allows you to pause in between your sentences, and the exclamation/question marks that reveal the speaker’s emotions.
The period, of course, needs no mention, given its already star status in the world of grammatical marks.
Anyway, a hoax some time back swirled around the death of the semi-colon; supposedly, Nicolas Sarkozy had initiated a crackdown on the much misunderstood …

Writers can be a rather frumpy lot. We tend to hold on to things we believe are “correct” or “appropriate”, in the same way that the Grammar Nazi believe modernizing the Queen’s language is sacrilege. We hold on to things that we learned from our teachers, mentors, literary idols. We tend to find solace in age old practices, thinking that we can never go wrong as long as we stay true to these time-tested adages.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Here are some myths we might have …

As much as I love Jim of The Net Fool, I saw one of his recent blog articles and had a seizure.
Not literally, though, and I’m still perfectly fine.
Anyway, I’m an e-mail subscriber of Jim’s moneymaking blog, so I automatically get updates when he has new posts. Last week, unfortunately, the title of his latest post sent me into a grammar fit. Here, in full, is his post’s title: “Question and Answer Session with the Net Fool: Win a Free Prize!”
Tell me you see what’s wrong.
I’ll understand if …

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Yesterday, I went back to some of my old posts and started editing. I wasn’t just hunting for run of the mill errors; I was looking for something specific that — if not corrected — could ruin me. We could call it the Holy Grail of the Written Word.

I was looking for “i.e.” and replacing it with “e.g.”.

As a young student, I was taught early on that both “i.e.” and “e.g.” are used prior to giving examples. The only difference is that “i.e.” is used to give examples in sentence form, while “e.g.” is used when you enumerate.

I want my money back, school. That’s not how “i.e.” and “e.g.” are used.