You’ve just completed the report for your boss or written a business letter, or finished off your paper for your college professor. You run it through spelling and grammar checks, and there are no squiggly lines to show any possible errors. You’re convinced your work is perfect, but unless you take the time to proofread, …
The reason you’re likely here reading this article is you need to know the spelling of “horderves” and not knowing it, you simply sounded it out. While the word may sound like horderves, this is not the correct spelling. The correct spelling of horderves is hors d’oeuvres. Of course, it’s not always necessary to know …
Transition words are words or phrases used to link ideas together. They help your reader to see more than one point is important and both should be taken into consideration. They also indicate different ideas in the same paragraph or sentence are related. Let’s get into the different types of transition words to make the …
As you know, acronyms are letters or phrases that we often use in the same way as we use words. For example, NATO and NASA are acronyms. You just read each as they stand. Sometimes, acronyms don’t sound quite right when you read then as words. For example, in a sentence about the FDA, you …
There are numerous places where you’re only expected to leave a brief comment when you write a review. For example, an Amazon review consists of allocating a star rating and writing anything from a couple of words: “Great product!” to a couple of paragraphs to explain just why you think the product or vendor is …
There is a lot of confusion when it comes to the Oxford comma and whether or not it should be used. To make matters worse, there was a time when school children were taught they should never use the Oxford comma. That’s no longer the case today. While Oxford commas are strictly optional, different style …
Little words can make a big difference as to how powerful and persuasive your writing is. Although some bloggers have tried to make long lists of power words, almost any word can become powerful. It just depends on how you use it. Power words forge an emotional connection, they indicate action and achievement, or they …
How long is a piece of string? How tall is a tree? As we so often find, there is no single answer to certain questions, and the question of how long it takes to write a book is one of these. There are so many variables that come into play it would be difficult to …
Sometimes it’s difficult to know whether or not to capitalize certain words. Most of us know the days of the week and the months of the year are capitalized, but what about the seasons? Many people have to stop and think if they’re supposed to capitalize winter, spring, summer and fall (or autumn). It’s the …
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, …
