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- The dos and don’ts of “dos and don’ts”
- Pass time and past time versus pastime
- Use versus utilize
- Than vs. Then
- Till vs. ‘Til
- When to italicize foreign words and phrases
- Funny Spanish idioms
- Military titles and AP Style
- Confusing Plurals: Data, Criteria, and Media
- Business jargon to avoid (so you don’t sound like a douche)
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Tag Archives: literature
Titles of works: italics or quotation marks
Today we’re going to talk about titles of works (movies, books, articles, and more) and whether they should be in italics or quotation marks. You’ll learn the rules in The Chicago Manual of Style, which is the style guide people … Continue reading
Posted in copy editing, style issues
Tagged Chicago Manual of Style, copy editing, italics, literature, pop culture, quotation marks, titles of works
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Word Nerd Wednesday
Welcome back to this week’s Word Nerd Wednesday. Here are some of the best language-related stories I found on the interwebs: What do alligators, cannibals, and potatoes have in common? They are all Spanish words the English language adopted. A … Continue reading
Posted in foreign language, in the news, literature, style issues
Tagged eBook reader, literature, placeholder text, Spanish, vocabulary
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Word Nerd Wednesday
Here’s a roundup of my favorite language-related stories, brought to you by the pipes of the Internet. Ben Zimmer meditates on The Beatles’ use of pronouns in The New York Times. Really? Bubble Wrap is a trademark? Here are twenty-four … Continue reading
Posted in copy editing, grammar, in the news, literature
Tagged book covers, David Bowie, literature, pop culture, Shakespeare, trademarked products, vocabulary
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Word Nerd Wednesday
Happy hump day. Here’s part two of Grammar Party’s Word Nerd Wednesday series, where I lovingly compile and share some of the most interesting language-related tidbits floating around the interwebs. Tattoos inspired by books at tattoolit: http://tattoolit.com/ Does using pronouns … Continue reading
Posted in copy editing, grammar, in the news, literature, punctuation, story time
Tagged copy editing, crafts, endangered words, grammar, literature, nerd, Oxford English Dictionary, pop culture, pronouns, tattoo, vocabulary, word nerd
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Simply dashing part one: the em dash
Welcome to part one of a three-part series about horizontal fun in the punctuation department: the em dash, the en dash, and the hyphen. Through this series, you’ll learn the difference between these marks and when to use which one. … Continue reading
Yo mama’s so fat a hyperbole couldn’t even exaggerate her weight.
Lesson: Spotting hyperbole in literature, pop culture, and politics. hyperbole: an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.” –dictionary.com Hyperbole is a tool used in literature and rhetoric when you … Continue reading
Posted in literature, story time
Tagged history, hyperbole, jokes, literature, Michele Bachmann, politics, pop culture, Stephen Hawking, vocabulary, word usage, yo mama
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Is that irony in your pocket? I couldn’t tell without a punctuation mark.
Think the interrobang is strange? Well, the nonstandard punctuation department is hardly a lonely place. For centuries, humans have been toying with squiggly lines and dots, trying to get them to do more than the jobs of standard punctuation. One … Continue reading
Posted in punctuation
Tagged history, Idiocracy, interrobang, irony mark, literature, punctuation
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