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The Difference Between Alot, A Lot and Allot

Since there is such a lot of confusion about homonyms (words that are pronounced in the same way but spelled differently such as wether, weather and whether), it’s time to allot the task of explaining this trio to you. That last sentence may already have explained the difference between ‘allot’ and ‘a lot’ quite economically, but let’s have some fun with our words and also get around to ‘alot’.

Spoken and Informal English

When we speak, we seldom think about the individual words we use as much as we think about the phrases. So when you say “How are you?’ you probably chose the whole phrase out of your mental linguistic archives rather than thinking about every word. It’s almost as if your brain sees the phrase as a word in itself.

When we say phrases like this, we often run the words together so that they almost sound like one word, and that’s where a lot of English errors have their origin.

Is “Alot” a Word?

When we use English to write informally, we sometimes lump words together, even when they don’t really belong together. ‘Alot’ is one of these, and under current English rules, it’s really incorrect. People use it to say ‘a lot’, and although some argue that the contraction without the space isn’t a big deal and may be accepted as correct English at some time in the future, it isn’t correct today.

If ‘alot’ does ever become an accepted form, it will be strictly informal. Other ‘lumped together’ words that are accepted in informal writing are ‘gonna’ and ‘wanna’, but you definitely won’t be using them in a business letter or school assignment.

To avoid confusing your friends, ‘a lot’ is definitely the way to go, and it means exactly the same thing – it’s the opposite of ‘a little bit’. So I hope you have learned a lot already, and that you won’t be using ‘alot’ in future.

What Does “Allot” Mean?

Returning to our introduction, I said “it’s time to allot the task of explaining this trio to you” So obviously, I am using the word to describe giving a task. I could also say: “Reading my essay on How to Write a College Admissions Essay is your allotted task for today.” Or I might say “I am allotting you the task of…,” or “I allot you the task of…”

So I can use the word “allot” to share out tasks or work. I could also use it to describe something else that we’ll share: “Of the $50 we earned at our lemonade stand, I’ll allot $10 to you for your help”. It’s possible I’m being a little greedy with my profits and keeping the lion’s share, but at least I am sharing. “Allot” is a verb, but it can be turned into a noun, by adding “ment” to the end. Now we have a noun describing a thing that is shared, so an “allotment” is usually someone’s piece of a shared item such as a piece of land that has been shared between several people. An easy trick to remembering this is that “allot” indicates some kind of sharing, and sharing requires at least two people — “allot” has two ‘l’s’.

“Allot” is quite a formal word, so you’d usually use the word “share” when you’re talking to friends about dividing up a pizza or the costs of a fun trip. It’s also perfectly correct to use “share” in most formal contexts, so if you’re not quite sure about when it would be appropriate to use “allot” use “share” instead, and you can’t really go wrong.

Spell Check Pitfalls

My computer doesn’t like it when I use ‘alot’. Every time I type it, auto correct shoves the space in there, and I have to go back and fix it. Once I’ve done that, spell check underlines it in red showing me that it’s a mistake. But if I were to type the word “allot” and drop one of the ‘l’s’ by accident, it would do exactly the same thing. I’d mean “allot” but get “a lot”, and there’d be no indication from spell check that my work contained any mistakes to speak of. That’s just one example that illustrates the need for careful proofreading – even when you have spell check to help you.

(Photo courtesy of Linas V)

Ten Reasons You Might Want to Create a Random Name

You’re you, and you’re quite happy that way. Why would you want to create a random name for anything or anyone or even for yourself? It’s strange but true: you may well find the need to come up with a random name at some time in your life. There’s a good chance you have made your way to this article because you’re in search of a random name for some specific reason, and it’s not because you’re about to commit a crime – at least, we hope not! The best way to find a random name is through a random name generator. Here are some of the reason you may want to come up with random names:

You’re a writer

You may have already decided on names for your leading men and leading ladies, but what about your supporting cast of characters? You can’t call them all “John Doe” or “Jane Doe”. Looking at random names can help you come up with the perfect character name which you may not have ever considered on your own.

You need a pen name

There are a lot of reasons why writers choose to adopt a nom de plume. You could be writing on a controversial subject and want to avoid getting hate-mail from those who don’t agree with you, or you could be writing in several genres and want your readers to associate different author names with each of these. Whatever you reasons, a random name may be just what you need.

You need an online persona

Participating in online forums and discussions is an innocent activity, but all too many people find they are targeted by ‘trolls’ or stalked by sickos who make scary threats. Whether they are actually able to deliver on these is questionable, but it can be scary when you’re using your real name. They could track you down on social media and find out where you work or even find ways to trace your physical address. Are you scared yet? Use an online name instead.

You don’t want to give away any personal information

So many websites require signup details including your name and email address. Before you know it, you’re receiving spam from people wanting to sell you fake pharmaceuticals and goodness knows what else. Although reputable sites do try to keep your details private, that information could be hacked. The results could include identity theft, so it’s no wonder that many choose fake names for website signups.

Testing things out

When you need good test data, using your own or someone else’s information could result in some very real hassles for you. The solution? A fake identity that you use just to check that everything works as it should.

Getting naming ideas for babies or pets

Although most of us have ideas about what we’d like to name our kids, our partners may not agree. If you need an alternative, random names could present you with some new ideas you hadn’t previously considered. As for pets – well, any idea is better than no idea, right?

Your given name is difficult

Have you ever dealt with clients in China? You’ll find that they’ve all got names like ‘Vicky’ and ‘Simon’. Are they hiding there real names for devious reasons? No, they are being courteous. They understand that you may have trouble pronouncing their names, and have chosen something you’ll find easier to identify with.

A fake name to hide a crummy real name

We can’t overlook stage names in this list of reasons for adopting or using a random name. If your name is Chris Crummey, it may seem that stardom will forever be beyond you. If you were to achieve fame despite your moniker, the jokes would be intolerable. That’s why Chris Crummey of the rock band Deep Purple chose the stage name ‘Chris Curtis’. It’s way less crummy (with apologies to Chris).

Your name’s taken

Performing arts guilds are all too ready to take up cudgels against those who seek fame under the name of an existing member. Have you ever wondered what the ‘J’ stands for in the name ‘Michael J. Fox’? It stands for nothing. It’s just there because another, less famous actor with a guild membership was already named ‘Michael Fox’. But what if your name already matches that of a famous person? You might not want to be associated with the singer Michael Jackson just because that’s your name. A random name might suit you better.

You just like the sound of it

Sometimes it’s just nice to have a name on hand that you use from time to time because you like the sound of it. Your parents ended up naming you, but if you could name yourself, what would that be? Going through a list of random names can help you pick the name you would have chosen for yourself.

(Photo courtesy of Jack Dorsey)

Do You Capitalize the Word After a Colon and a Semi-Colon?

do you capitalize the word after a colon or semi-colon?

The mysteries of punctuation are myriad, and they often come out when you are writing an essay. Where should commas actually go? When do you use a colon or a semi-colon, and should you capitalize your first letter after one of these full-stop hybrids?

For those looking for a quick and dirty answer, a word is not capitalized after a colon. A word is not capitalized after a semi-colon as well. There are, however, a few exceptions. If the word that comes after a colon or semi-colon is a proper name, you definitely would capitalize it. “Alice” remains capitalized, and so does “Missouri”, but north would not. In addition, if you’re quoting someone after a colon, they open their speech or text with a capital letter. The rest of the time, it’s lower case. To put it slightly differently, you aren’t starting a new sentence when you use a colon or semi-colon, so you would only use capitals in the places you ordinarily would.

Semi-Colons

Semi-colons are the more confusing of the two for most, so we’ll begin here. The reason why they may make you wonder whether there really should be a capital letter after them comes from the way they’re used.

“I walked into the shop. Everything was on sale, so I bought a lot.”

The two sentences are closely related, and they’re a bit choppy when they’re as short as this. So you might put a semi-colon to work here, both to reduce the choppiness and to show the relationship between the two sentences.

“I walked into the shop; everything was on sale, so I bought a lot.”

As you can see, both parts of this sentence could stand alone with a full-stop between them, and if you did that, you’d use the capital letter. When you place a semi-colon between them, they become one sentence, so no capital letter is used. It also links the ideas. When you walked into the shop, you saw that everything was on sale. That’s the reason why you bought a lot.

An important hint is to try not to join longer sentences together. A semi-colon could make your sentence as long as a paragraph. Longer sentences are hard to read and understand. If you are in college or university, you may be tempted to write long, complicated sentences. But if your work becomes difficult to read, it also becomes difficult to mark, and your professors have a lot of papers to go through. Keep your sentences short, purposeful and crisp.

Advice to neophytes: if you’re still not sure when to use a semi-colon, just avoid using them altogether. Keep your sentences punchy and only handle one thought at a time.

Colons

Colons are a little easier to use and understand. That’s because the first part of the sentence could stand alone. It is followed by a statement that either can or can’t stand alone, but that expands on the idea in the first part of the sentence. Confused? Hang in there! Here’s where you use colons:

When you make a list: I had to pack a lot of things: sunblock, a hat, my beach towel, a magazine, something for lunch, and my trusty beach sandals.
When you quote someone: As Churchill said: “We will never surrender!”
To link very, very closely related sentences: Troubles are like bubbles: they float away and die.

Using colons in the wrong places is a common fault, and as you can see, the only time you’d use a capital letter after a colon is when you are quoting someone. Your speaker is starting a new sentence, so after the first inverted comma, you usually have a capital letter. What happens after inverted commas if you still want to continue the sentence, or what to do if you are quoting a fragment of a sentence is another matter, and we’ll leave that for another day.

A common colon error can easily be avoided. The first part of your sentence – the bit before the colon – should be an independent clause. It should be able to stand on its own as a sentence. For example, if I were to use a colon in the following sentence: “I saw a lot of animals on safari, including: giraffes, lions, crocodiles, and many types of deer,” that would be wrong.

Read this: “I saw a lot of animals on safari including.” Is that first part a full sentence? It certainly isn’t. The moral of the story? That’s not the right kind of place to put a colon. A colon would be fine if that sentence read: “I saw a lot of animals on safari: giraffes, lions, etc.”

Look at the first part of that sentence: “I saw a lot of animals on safari.” It’s a perfect independent clause. It stands alone.

There you have it. The vast majority of the time you simply don’t capitalize the word after a semi-colon or a colon.

(Photo courtesy of Joe Loong)

Ten Word Games Everyone Should Play

For those wanting to improve vocabulary and spelling, doing so doesn’t have to be all hard work and no play. Word games get our mental juices going as we strive to solve puzzles, beat our neighbors and come up with letter combinations that magically make sense when arranged in the right way.

If you were to search this title on the internet, you’d mostly find reference to word gaming apps, and many of them are really quite good, but on the whole, it’s still the classics that are the most fun. That’s not to say you should avoid the apps. Many are based on the classics, and the ones that set time limits for you to make your move or expect you to find as many words as possible in a given time provide an extra challenge – and a shot of adrenalin. Still, it’s still worthwhile to play some of the classic games from time to time since they can be pure word joy.

Scrabble

This game will always be a classic choice – and trying to hit those double or triple word scores adds an element of strategy. Before you begin, be sure to decide on a dictionary to use as your source. Scrabble specific dictionaries often allow a lot of ‘words’ that aren’t words at all – at least not in the everyday sense. I prefer to use my trusty dictionary set as a reference; if it’s not there, you can’t use it. Of course, that’s just me. Many people are happy to immerse themselves in scrabble dictionaries to learn sneaky new two and three letter words, or a variety of words that begin with the letter Q.

Crosswords

If you don’t have a handy friend to compete against, a solitary word game works best. Crosswords range from the deeply cryptic to the relatively simple, but they’re always challenging. Be sure to use a pencil with an eraser on the back, because there are times when more than one word fits the clue.

Hangman

To play this game the traditional way with pen and paper, you need a real live opponent. There are several app versions, so you can also load it on your smartphone to keep yourself entertained on your commute or when waiting for appointments. There are a number of variations on the theme, but they all involve guessing a word from clues. Every wrong guess sees a drawing of hanged man progressing further – so you have a limited amount of guesses.

Pictionary

This game is best played when you have at least three other people joining in. It’s fun, there’s often hilarity, and you get to practice your language skills – and your drawing skills – simultaneously. It’s been around since 1985, and it’s still going strong.

Spill and Spell

Spill out the letters and see how many words you can make with them. Because you multiply the number of letters used in your word to calculate your points, the longer your word is, the better. A 5 letter word would make you 25 points, but a 6 letter word scores 36.

Word Search

Puzzle books, newspapers, and magazines often offer word search games. Once again, there are plenty of word search puzzles available online. Can you find all the hidden words? Sometimes, it can be quite tricky! On the whole, though, it’s an easy game that tests your powers of observation and your reading skills.

Target

Target puzzles are among my favorites even though they often have me beaten after hours of thought. You really have to think out of the box, and finding all the words hidden in the 9 letters the puzzle offers is truly challenging. You’re given 9 letters, one of which has to be included in every word you make. There’s usually just one 9-letter word hidden in your letter set – but there may be several 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 letter words. How many can you find?

Typing Games

Typing games help you to improve your typing speed, accuracy, and spelling. There are tons of free options online, or you could just set a timer and try your hand at touch typing by copying a random text. Remember – you aren’t supposed to look at the keyboard.

Balderdash

Returning to more sociable games, Balderdash is bound to provoke laughter. At the same time, you’ll learn some pretty obscure words while you try to distinguish fake definitions from real ones. Learning really can be fun.

Words with Friends

There has to be at least one high-tech word game in the bunch, and Words with Friends is a hugely popular option with many celebrities giving it the thumbs up. Basically, it’s scrabble played online, but I’ve been warned that it’s highly addictive. As a natural-born words geek, I’ve been avoiding it because I’m sure all my writing will go down the drain if I begin to play.

Do you know another great word game you like to play? Share it in the comments so we can add it to this list!

(Photo courtesy of Janet Galore)

10 Reasons Blog Titles Are So Important to Your Articles

What’s in a name? Actually, quite a lot, especially if you’re blogging. You may have a dedicated group of followers who’ll read everything you post no matter what title you give it, but if you want to attract new readers and hold their attention, tiles are vitally important. Not convinced? Check out the 10 reasons why your blog title can make or break your blog post.

You have five seconds – and maybe less

If you don’t pay attention to anything else on this list, pay attention to this. You have five seconds or less: that’s how long it takes for someone to decide whether they’re going to read your post or not. Without a compelling title, your blog post will fall flat. Your content could include wit, entertaining or useful information, but still get ignored completely. Spend time thinking about your title. Play around with a few alternatives. It’s worth taking an extra few minutes to craft the right title for your post. it’s also important to capitalize your titles correctly no matter which style you choose. If you aren’t sure, use a headline capitalization tool to make sure you’re accurate and consistent.

Titles tell people what your article is about

This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you think about it, you’ll start remembering all the say-nothing titles you’ve encountered. For example, ‘A word to the wise’ says absolutely nothing about what your reader should expect to find in your article. You can write a fabulous post under that heading only to find that it never gets read.

Improve traffic from search engines

This is one of the most important considerations you need to take into account when crafting a title. Being keyword savvy will help search engines to direct potential readers to your post. What words are people using to search for the information you’re about to share? Try your keywords out on AdWords keyword planner to see how often your terms are searched and what the competition is like.

Engage your readers

Think about your potential readership. What do they want? Most people are looking for actionable information that applies to them. In most cases (but not all) they’re not interested in you or your opinions, but they do want to find something that they can use.

For example, this post could have been titled “Blog titles are important”. It’s rather ho-hum boring, but that’s what the article is about. Instead, you have been brought into the equation. Titles are important to YOUR blog articles. You also know that you’re going to get ten tips. That’s right – ten. That means that the writer can’t just waffle.

The other extreme is an alienating title: “The philosophy of blog post title writing and the marked effect of titles on search engine statistics” sounds like it’s going to put you to sleep. It also sounds downright pompous!

Get potential readers excited

Have you ever come across a title that made you feel as if you simply had to read the article that went with it? And once you’d read it, you couldn’t help sharing it with everyone you know. That’s the kind of excitement you’d like your blog to generate – and it all begins with the title. At the same time, you shouldn’t resort to using cheap tactics. Your title still has to reflect the factual content of your post. If you lure readers in and then don’t deliver the goods, they won’t be back. “10 sensational ways to fight fat” might sound exciting, but if your diet and exercise tips aren’t ‘sensational’, your reader will feel cheated.

Why should someone read your post?

Think about it. If you can’t think of a reason for someone to want to read your post, you should probably choose another topic. You’ll see this principle in action in titles that pose a question or include ‘questioning’ words like ‘why’ and ‘what’. For example, “Why you should eat avocados to lose weight” or “What you need to know about income tax” are way better than “Avocados for weight loss” or “Income tax explained”.

Take advantage of people’s curiosity

Curiosity is a wonderful thing, and you can use it to your advantage. Don’t distil your entire article’s contents into the title and first paragraphs. Create a “read on” moment by stimulating curiosity and leading your reader to want more.

You’ll see this a lot in sales copy. There’ll be a sensational headline “Get mega-conversions on your e-commerce site with this clever strategy” it trumpets. Then the writer builds suspense: “What if I told you that the world’s top 5 e-commerce providers have one thing in common?” and so on, before delivering the coup de grace – the actual strategy he or she is talking about.

Titles may be all the reader sees

Think about your own search habits. You enter the keyword and get gazillions of search results. You scan the titles for promising-looking content before you even bother with the meta-descriptions. If the title of an article or post doesn’t interest you, your eyes just slide off it and you keep looking until you see a title that looks relevant and interesting.

Entertaining or thought-provoking

People aren’t only looking for information online – they also want to be amused, entertained or interested. Use plays on words and humor cautiously though — a sense of humor failure is a common phenomenon online!

Curveballs and controversy

Taking a stance that’s outside mainstream of public opinion can generate a lot of interest and interaction, but once again, you do need to be cautious. If you’re going to be controversial, expect some flak and be prepared to have thick skin on the comments that will come in. Still, you will have people reading your article which is better than nobody reading it at all.

(Photo courtesy of Amy Gahran)

The Difference Between Wether, Weather, and Whether

You look at the page and see three words: weather, whether and wether. Although none of these three words is spelled the same, they all sound the same when you say them. They’re classed as homonyms. They have the same pronunciation but different meanings. It’s easy to confuse them, and it’s easy to write one word when you really want to use another (this is more common than you think in English such as with on to and onto, and it can happen even with words that aren’t homonyms like further and farther. How can you tell the difference?

Wether: something you never knew about sheep

First, “wether” is hardly ever used, so you can almost forget about it, but it’s still good to know its meaning. Yes, some people might write it by accident instead of “whether” or even “weather” but it means something completely different than both those words. Actually, a wether is a male sheep or goat that’s had a particularly sensitive operation in the groin area we won’t explain in detail here. It’s only farmers and animal experts who usually need to know and use this word.

Weather: just look out the window

People everywhere love to complain about the weather no matter if it’s the rain, the wind, the sun, or a combination of all of these. Weather is the state of the natural environment in a place at a particular time. Cold weather comes with winter, and hot or warm weather arrives in summer.

Of course, the northern hemisphere has winter at the same time that the south has summer. This means that different seasons actually occur at the same time in different places, not just different weather. This is where weather becomes a little confusing, but you don’t need to worry about this. Just understand what the word means. When it starts with “we,” it’s talking about the natural conditions that “we” experience.

Whether: to be or not to be

On the other hand, “whether” has absolutely nothing to do with sheep or how it is outside. This word is normally used as a conjunction. “And” is a conjunction. So is “or.” Consider this sentence:

“Whether we go to the moon or not, we will think it’s beautiful.”

It’s almost the same as saying:

“If we go to the moon, or if we stay on Earth, we will think the moon is beautiful.”

So “whether” is very much like “if.” And you can see that you have two choices. One is fabulous: you can visit the moon. This means you’re either an astronaut or a billionaire with your own private space vehicle. If that’s so, you can stop reading this right now and do all the important things you have on your schedule today. The second choice is a lot duller: to stay home. However, both choices allow you to appreciate the lunar beauty, so we have two happy endings.

A variation of this occurs in the following sentence:

“I don’t know whether I can pass astronaut training school.”

There is just one situation stated here: to pass. You can either pass or fail, so you have two choices, but the “pass” option is the only one stated. In the first sentence, you can either go or not go, and that’s two choices as well, but both are clearly stated.

And if you want to pass astronaut school, we recommend a lot more advanced math and science in addition to English. You also need to be athletic, healthy, smart, dedicated, lucky… But anything’s possible.

Language keeps changing – whether you like it or not

“Whether” also used to be a pronoun that meant the same as “which” or “whichever.” For example:

“Whichever you buy, the Rolls-Royce or the Cadillac, you’ll have a great car” can also be stated “”Whether you buy the Rolls-Royce or the Cadillac, you’ll have a great car.”

Now, these are not personal pronouns like “I” or “you.” There are quite a few types of pronouns, but they all have this in common: they replace nouns or refer to nouns. So in the sentence above, “whichever” refers to “Cadillac” and “Rolls-Royce.” Since “whether” is not really used as a pronoun these days, you don’t need to remember this definition. Just think “if” any time you see “whether,” and you’ll be on the right track.

Whatever the weather you’ll know whether you’re right

Knowing what the weather will do next isn’t easy, but knowing whether you should use one homonym or another is just a little memory game. As for the sheep, most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about anyway, so just call them ‘sheep’ and you’ll be doing just fine.

(Photo courtesy of Roberto Verzo)

What is a Pronoun? The 10 Types

If you want to become a better writer there are a number of steps you can take like improving your vocabulary. It also helps to have a good grasp of grammar, and what may initially seem to be simple isn’t always so. For example, can you guess how many pronouns are in the following sentence?

“I bought all of these myself, so these are mine; they are my things!”

If you were able to find seven pronouns, then you found them all. If you found less than seven, you can check the answer by looking at the words below in bold.

I bought all of these myself, so these are mine; they are my things!

Yes, each word in bold is a pronoun. Remember, a pronouns relates to a noun, and that’s why the word “noun” is inside “pronoun.” When you don’t want to or can’t use a noun, you choose a pronoun.

Different Types of Pronouns

Since English is a complex language, there are different classes of pronouns. The most important ones are personal pronouns. “I” is the most common example of this. Then there are “we, you, he/she, it, they.” They refer to humans, or living beings such as animals, so they are personal. I the simplest terms, they deal with persons.

“Myself” can be either an intensive pronoun or a reflexive pronoun. In the sentence above, it’s intensive because the speaker wants to emphasize that he alone bought the items. And since “myself” actually refers to “I,” not a proper noun, you can see that pronouns sometimes refer to other pronouns. In the sentence below, “myself” is reflexive:

“I gave myself a good lecture because I was disappointed in my work.”

The person doing the action and the one receiving the action are the same, so it’s a reflexive act and a reflexive pronoun. All pronouns that end with “self” or “selves” must be either reflexive or intensive, depending on how they are used.

Reciprocal pronouns involve actions or feelings that happen between two people. For example:

They gave each other Christmas presents.
They like one another so much that they are never apart.

The two most common ones are, naturally, “each other” and “one another.”

Possessive pronouns are easy to understand. They show who owns or who has something. “My, your, his, her, its, our, their” are possessive. Would you say: “This is Mandy, David, Sue and Lisa’s house?” No. You would say, “This is their house.” In this way, possessive pronouns are useful and convenient. Absolute possessive pronouns are similar: “mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs.” The difference between the two types is that you cannot use a possessive alone, but you can use absolute possessive alone.

1. The telescope is my property.
2. The telescope is mine.

In the first example, a noun must go with “my.” The second sentence shows that “mine” doesn’t need one.

You use a relative pronoun when you want to introduce more information or another idea.

“The park, which is far from the city, has a zoo with African animals.”

Here, “which” is relative. “That, who, whom, whose, where” are also relative pronouns.

When you ask a question, the first word is often an interrogative pronoun.

Which horse runs the fastest?
How do you wash the dishes so well?

As you can see, “which” is either relative or interrogative. How you use a pronoun can determine what type it is.

Another issue that makes pronouns a little more complicated is a word like “how.” It doesn’t refer to any noun. It is used to ask about a way or method or cause.

When you read or hear “this, that, these, those,” you have an example of demonstrative pronouns. They show people exactly what is being talked about.

“This table is worth thousands, but that one in the corner is worthless.”

Finally, we have indefinite pronouns. They aren’t like the other types because they don’t refer to any specific person or object. “All, some, any, none, no one” are examples of this. When you use these pronouns, you are speaking or writing in a general way. These words can refer to many possible people

All the people of the world want peace.
Some of them love to laugh, but others are very serious.

As you can see, answering the question, “What is a pronoun?” is a lot more complicated than it first appears. This article should have given you a good basic understanding of what a pronoun is, and the different types of pronouns which exist in the English language.

(Photo courtesy of Philippe Put)

Do You Capitalize North, South, East and West?

When it comes to the question of directions, there’s often quite a bit of confusion as to whether or not you should capitalize the directions north, south, east and west. Part of the problem is there are times you do and times you don’t, and sometimes the difference between the two isn’t readily apparent. In other words, the answer is “it depends.” For those who are looking for a general rule of thumb, the answer to the question, “When do you capitalize directions?” the answer is You capitalize north, east, south and west when they’re part of a proper name, but you don’t if they only indicate direction.

Chances are that one of the reasons you’re here is that you’ve noticed that you sometimes see directions capitalized, while at other times you don’t. The question is, how do you know when you should be using the capital letter?

Directions: north, south, east and west

When you’re using a direction to describe nothing but the direction, lower case letters are the ones to choose. For example, if you say “The sun is weakest on the north side (or northern side)” lower case letters are fine. In this case, your are using the word “north” to show orientation of the sun, and you’re not using the direction as a proper name. On a side note, the directions in the title of this article are capitalized due to headline capitalization rules even though they merely indicate direction.

As soon as you start using directions as part of a proper name, they get capitalized. It’s similar to why your name is always capitalized. So, if a person is from South Africa, south would be capitalized since it’s the proper name of the country. When you’re talking about America’s West Coast or the Middle East, the directional word is also part of a proper name, and it gets a capital letter. Sometimes, people abbreviate these names which can make it a bit more confusing. For example, you could say a person is from the West or the East meaning they are from the West Coast or the East Coast in the US. Even though you don’t spell it out completely, you still use a capital letter.

To put it in another way that may make it easier to understand, talking about a region, such as Western Europe, means capitals are used. On the other hand, if you tell someone to go south along the freeway, that’s just a direction, and it gets a lowercase letter. This may seem pretty straightforward, but there are times when there is a debate as to whether or not the direction is just a direction, or if it’s a proper name.

Not everyone agrees on whether you should capitalize the direction in a sentence like, “As a Southerner, he had a distinctive drawl.” Some say that you’re talking about someone who is from a particular region, and that a capital letter should be used. Others argue it’s just a direction of the place the person lives and doesn’t get a capital letter. I’m inclined to think that the ‘regional’ opinion is spot on, but this is an example of how differing opinions can lead to one person using a capital letter while another would use a lowercase letter for direction in the same sentence.

(Photo courtesy of Luis Perez)

What Is an Idiom?

If English is your second language, idioms may well puzzle you. The words that are used have little or nothing to do with the topic under discussion, but English speakers slip them in without thinking twice (if you’re interested in learning the meaning of many common idioms, you can use this random phrase generator). If you are a native English speaker and you’re wondering how on earth these figures of speech came to be a part of the English language, in many instances you’ll have your work cut out tracking their origins. Sometimes they’re well known, and sometimes, they’re quite obscure.

You may have noticed I used the phrase ‘have your work cut out’. It’s a typical example of an idiom. For those looking for a definition, an idiom is a frequently used saying where the words of the saying don’t relate to their literal meaning. To illustrate, what has cutting out got to do with having a difficult task to perform? The answer is simply “We don’t know”. There are a lot of stories about how this phrase slipped into common parlance, but nobody is absolutely sure.

Mad hatters, cats and dogs and more

Although idioms are a bit crazy – after all, the individual words don’t make literal sense, they do make the language more fun and colorful. For example, you could say that it’s raining very hard, but that isn’t nearly as colorful as saying it’s raining cats and dogs, even though canines and felines are not falling from the sky. The origins of this particular idiom are also foggy, but that doesn’t stop us from using the phrase.

English is an eccentric language, and its students might even think we’re all as mad as hatters. Lovers of literature may be pardoned for thinking that the idiomatic phrase “mad as a hatter” comes from the classic children’s story “Alice in Wonderland”, but they’ll have to look for darker origins to get to the truth of the matter. Old-fashioned hat makers worked with mercurous nitrate, and mental disturbance was a symptom of its poisoning effects.

Common Idioms: what they mean and where they come from

You can purchase whole dictionaries of idioms, so covering them all with a blog post would be absolutely impossible, but we’ve tracked down some common ones and did our best to uncover their origins.

“Driving me up the wall / round the twist” means that something is, at least figuratively speaking, maddening. A constant noise, someone else’s irritating habit or trying to grasp a difficult concept are all things that might drive you up the wall. No-one really knows when this idiom slipped into English, but the words themselves create the image of someone desperately trying to get away.

“Once in a blue moon”, “Over the moon” and “Asking for the moon” are among the many moon related expressions we use. A happy person who has just had something wonderful happen to them is “Over the moon” with this turn of events. A demanding person who wants you to do the impossible is “Asking for the moon” and something that happens very rarely occurs “Once in a blue moon”. So-called blue moons occur when there are two full moons in one month. It’s a rare occurrence, hence it’s use as an idiom.

“A case of the pot calling the kettle black” is a very old idiom and was first recorded by Cervantes in his classic book “Don Quixote”. It is used to describe someone who accuses another person of being something that they are themselves. Of course, back then, all cooking was done over the fire, so you can be sure that both pots and kettles were equally black.

“Beat around the bush” means avoiding the main point or issue. It’s one of the oldest idioms in English, and the oldest example we know of that comes from a medieval poem. Hunters would send ‘beaters’ out to beat at bushes so that birds or game would emerge, and then the hunt would be on. Obviously, the beaters didn’t get any game themselves, hence the saying. The 1440 example reads: “Butt as it hath be sayde full long agoo, Some bete the bussh and some the byrdes take.”

“Bad books” and “Black Books” are idioms for being displeased with someone. On the other side of the coin, there are “Good books”. This idiom demonstrates how the English language has changed. The word “books” was used in the same way as we use the word “esteem” today. There wasn’t actually a book about how you felt about others, so back in the Middle Ages, these sayings weren’t even idioms – they were a literal form of speech. “Passing the buck”, a disapproving way of saying that someone is handing on responsibilities to others, has its origins in the Wild West. Poker players took their game seriously, and to keep it as fair as possible, each player would have an opportunity to deal the cards. To show who would be dealer next, a knife, usually with a buck horn handle, would be placed on the table. Players called this knife, “the buck”.

Sometimes idioms come from folk wisdom. “Crying over spilt milk” would be a good example of this. Sometimes they come from stories and literature, and sometimes they have their origins in the obsolete uses of words. Studying them is more interesting than you might expect, so getting an idiom dictionary can be a worthwhile investment, even if you already know the meanings of many of them.

(Photo courtesy of gfpeck)

How Much Writing Do You Have to Do in Law School?

How much writing is there in law school?

Becoming a lawyer means you have to become good at a very specialized type of writing. In law, it’s not so much a matter of how much you write as how you write it. But as the saying goes: “Practice makes perfect,” and with business deals, agreements and even people’s futures on the line, if you miss an important point or choose the wrong words, the ramifications can be huge.

Here’s the main point you need to understand about writing and law school. You probably won’t be writing anything extraordinarily lengthy while at law school, but writing it will take a long time. You might spend hours on a single paragraph, tweaking it to make it just right. For the layman, legal writing might just look like a lot of words strung together, but every one of them is there for a reason and getting them right is crucial.

Your law review papers will be the longest

Most law students agree that the volume of writing isn’t so much of an issue. Your longest pieces will be law review papers, and the footnotes alone can be extensive and time-consuming. But they warn course work grades are often based on essays or papers, and the marks you get on these will make or break your pursuit of a law degree.

In the first year, chances are you’ll have to do a course covering legal research and writing. As you may have guessed, it will involve quite a lot of writing. But thereafter, the volume of written work decreases. The most important thing will be being able to write well and cram a lot of information into a few clear sentences.

So if you’re worried about required writing, the volume isn’t all that huge, but if you want to do well, you will probably need to practice not only your writing but your reading.

Practice reading?

At law school, you need to learn how to write like a lawyer, and there’s no better way of doing that than to learn to read like a lawyer. That means being able to grasp the language that is used – and believe me – although it’s English, it’s not the kind of English you’d usually use when you hang out with your buddies.

According to many law professors, reading like a lawyer is the biggest hurdle for most students. You may need hours to read a case that’s only a few pages when you first become a student. The good news is that the more you read, the better you get at understanding all the legal language, and the better equipped you’ll be when the time comes to do your own writing.

It’s a learned skill – and you will use it a lot

If reading the terms and conditions for the app you’re planning to download makes your eyes go blurry, and wading through contracts before you sign them gives you a headache, you’re not alone. Legal writing is a learned skill and uses its own special language and terminology. If you have a genuine eagerness to become a lawyer, you will need to master it.

You shouldn’t be considering a legal career if you don’t like writing. Legal writing is a bit like “blood and guts” and becoming a doctor. You might not see them all the time as a student, but when you do, things aren’t going to work out for you if you’re squeamish. Lawyers deal with words. There’s no such thing as a lawyer who doesn’t write.

Do you want to be a lawyer but not sure you’ll cope?

For a start, be absolutely sure you know what being a lawyer is like. A lot of students don’t. It’s nothing like what you see on TV. The reality of working in the legal field isn’t featured in courtroom dramas. The truth (and nothing but the truth) is that many lawyers will seldom see the inside of a courtroom. If you do end up in court, most of it will be very un-dramatic and quite boring.

Before you apply for law school read up on what being a lawyer would entail and how your career would progress. If law still sounds like just the thing for you, you can get a head start on your fellow students by reading “Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning” by Frederick Schauer. Hint: It will likely cover a lot of the work you’ll be given in your first year.

If you can grasp that legal reasoning, you’ll likely be able to manage the writing as well. Writing starts with thinking, and once you think like a lawyer, you should have the skills to write like one and get through law school.

(Photo courtesy of Mathieu Marquer)