Their, they’re and there. Whom and whose. The Oxford comma. The singular “they” pronoun. To English language purists, them are fightin’ words! The Guardians of Grammar will fight to the death to protect the purity of the English language, and these are the battles at the forefront of the language wars. The singular they has …
Tag: grammar
Jul 24
Off But Yet On Topic: The 10 Things I Want to Do Before I Die
Thanks to one of my favorite PR people/bloggers, Gini Dietrich and her blog Spin Sucks, I was treated to a very thought-provoking blog post from Jayme Soulati (@Soulati) on hopes, dreams and wishes, both unfulfillable and yet to be fulfilled. Jayme decided to use her blog to ponder whether we are satisfied with our lives’ …
Sep 18
What Makes Good Grammar – Sunday Coffee Coffee Contemplations
Watching Hugh Laurie on CBS Sunday Morning the day after grading papers, it suddenly struck me how grammatically correct his speech is, which is not normally the case. Written English and spoken English are usually very distinctly different, especially when you are dealing with American English instead of the Queen’s own. So what about Hugh …
Sep 04
Grammarian-in-Chief? Sunday Coffee Contemplations
Grammar and rhetorical skills are the most important qualities American voters use to decide who they will vote for in presidential elections. Beth Fouhy’s article, “Campaigns Find That Some Truths Are Inconvenient“, brought back something I’ve been pondering for a long time now: our habit of parsing the comments of politicians and business leaders, looking …
Apr 23
PR Pros: How to know when you’re overqualified?
OK, you are a public relations professional of a certain age, with a certain level of expertise. You find yourself adrift in the current job market, fruitlessly networking, applying to one posted position after another, with no results in sight. You are, in fact, entering the Overqualified Zone. How do you know when you’re overqualified? Like any …
Mar 22
Damn the Dash
Gordon Bennet writes on Utne Reader about the overuse of the em-dash as an all too convenient punctuation mark, and condemns the neglect the simple pleasures of the semicolon. Is it neglect, or laziness, as he suggests? Or is the semicolon outdated and destined for oblivion? And who knew there were more than one kind of …