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 …

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.

While surfing through one of my favorite websites, Sharp Words, I came upon this really funny graph that nailed many of the most common grammatical errors that drive me up the wall:

more graph humor and song chart memes
One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to writing is the incorrect use of “your” and “you’re”. I see this often in chatrooms and blogs, though I’m now jaded enough not to expect the best of prose online. If it’s just a momentary mental lapse then that’s fine. Everybody makes mistakes, …

If there’s one thing I truly, deeply abhor, it’s the incorrect use of prepositions.
There’s this girl in the company I work for — she’s really pretty, charming and (as far as I know) nice. The one problem I have with this near-stranger, though, is that she works as the administrative assistant and is in charge of writing and sending out company-wide memos. Often times, I feel like tearing out my hair in frustration upon reading her e-mails; they drive me crazy.
An example is in order, I suppose. …