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Viewing 1 - 20 of 23 results
Apr
22nd
2016

Grammer a Week 20: Why Do We Need Grammar? · 4:04am Apr 22nd, 2016

I get it; grammar is confusing. I mean, there's a reason why I make these blog posts on grammar—it's because I know it's confusing, I do research so I can be less confused, and I figured some of my readers could benefit from that research. But that brings to mind the operative question: why? Why do we care about something so trivial as where to place dots with little twiddles at the ends? The answer is, as many things are, complicated.

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Feb
14th
2015

Grammer a Week 4: Dialogue Punctuation and Capitalization · 1:06am Feb 14th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about quotation marks. The rules for placing punctuation about quotation marks are complicated. Each of the comma, period, exclamation point, and question mark have multiple rules for placement. What's worse, those rules change depending on where you live!

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Mar
27th
2015

Grammer a Week 8: Hierarchy of Adjectives · 11:14pm Mar 27th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about the proper ordering of adjectives. Consider a pony who is young, Equestrian, purple, and smart. It's Twilight, right? Simple. Now consider a young Equestrian purple smart pony. Well, the pony's still Twilight, but she'd yell at you for using your adjectives so irresponsibly.

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Feb
14th
2016

Grammer a Week 14: Subjunctive Mood · 8:33pm Feb 14th, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the subjunctive mood. The obvious question to ask is "what is subjunctive?" Because if you were brought up in an American high school, like I was, you probably weren't aware there was such thing as a subjunctive until you learned it in French or Spanish class first. Il faut que vous sachiez le subjonctif!

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May
15th
2015

Grammer a Week 13: Ellipses · 11:52pm May 15th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about the ellipsis. The ellipsis, otherwise known as the "dot-dot-dot," is a piece of punctuation that is very easily overused. It's powerful punctuation, undoubtedly, but only in moderation.

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Jan
23rd
2015

Grammer a Week 1: Comma Splices · 10:46pm Jan 23rd, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about the comma splice, and it's among the most pervasive errors I see on FiMFiction.

Making a comma splice is kind of like switching its cutie mark à la Magical Mystery Cure; you're forcing the comma into a role that it was never meant to play in. Stop making the comma sad and learn how to use it properly! :fluttercry:

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May
21st
2016

Grammer a Week 22: Word Splits · 2:46am May 21st, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about commonly confused words and whether they should be written as one or two. Onto vs. on to? Into vs. in to? Everyday vs. every day? There are dozens of these compound words that can either appear stuck together or separated by a space. Though some word pairs have the same meaning when stuck together, some are subtly different.

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Mar
3rd
2016

Grammer a Week 16: Oxford Commas · 3:01am Mar 3rd, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the Oxford comma. Also known as the serial comma, the Oxford comma is a subject of intense debate among grammarists. Not as vicious as, perhaps, the debate about single vs. double spacing, but it's still something you'll see people screaming

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Mar
13th
2015

Grammer a Week 7: Semicolons · 10:28pm Mar 13th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about the semicolon. You know that keyboard key under your right pinky finger? Yeah, the one that you never seem to use? That's the semicolon key. It's probably the most under-used key on the home row. It really shouldn't be there, but now that it is, might as well figure out how to use it, right?

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Mar
7th
2015

Grammer a Week 6: "Who" vs. "Whom" · 1:08am Mar 7th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about the difference between "who" and "whom." If you're speaking informally, you could simply use "who" all the time and no one would care much. But if you're one of few who cares about these sort of things, read on.

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May
4th
2016

Grammer a Week 21: Active vs. Passive Voice · 1:48pm May 4th, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the active and passive voice. You might have heard of this term before. Maybe your teacher told it to you, or maybe some well-meaning critic informed you that your entire story was written wrong. However you came to know this term, or even if you haven't, it's important to know how to use each voice and where.

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Mar
10th
2016

Grammer a Week 17: Differences Between American and British English · 3:11pm Mar 10th, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the differences between American and British English. Just because we speak the same language doesn't mean there aren't a laundry-load of differences between our dialects. This post will cover some of the more interesting differences between the two.

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Apr
18th
2015

Grammer a Week 11: Single vs. Double Spacing · 1:25am Apr 18th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about single vs. double spacing. Okay, I know I'm gonna step on some toes with this post, but in general, it's a good idea to leave only a single space after a period.

*ducks*

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Apr
3rd
2015

Grammer a Week 9: That vs. Which · 10:29pm Apr 3rd, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about that vs. which. This is probably an error that has caught you a few times in Microsoft Word. At least, that's how I was first informed of this error! So what's the differences between these two words? It actually underscore a far more complicated and important subject that needs some discussion: the difference between restrictive

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Feb
28th
2015

Grammer a Week 5: Sentence Structure · 4:40am Feb 28th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about sentence structure. Yeah, it seems like a boring concept, but trust me: it's a subject worth knowing. If you know your sentence structures well, making unique, interesting, and varied sentences will become easier. Oh, and you know those pesky commas that you don't know where to place? A good half of those comma issues can be

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Jan
30th
2015

Grammer a Week 2: Dash Types · 11:54pm Jan 30th, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about dash types. Depending on who you ask the question "How many different dash types are there?" you might get different responses. If you ask an ordinary person, they might answer just one. If you ask a good author, they might say three or four. If you ask a typesetter, they might say five or more.

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Apr
11th
2015

Grammer a Week 10: Style Guides · 1:04am Apr 11th, 2015

Hey! Welcome to the tenth edition of Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I would normally address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week will be a little bit different; in celebration of ten weeks of pedantic grammar soapboxing, I'll talk about where I get most of these grammar rules from. Style guides!

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Feb
23rd
2016

Grammer a Week 15: The Curious Case of "Pegasus" · 6:35pm Feb 23rd, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment definitely errs more on the side of "interesting" than "useful" because I'm talking about the word "pegasus" today. What do you think the plural form of the word "pegasus" is? "Pegasuses"? "Pegasi"? That question is actually much harder to answer than you may think.

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Mar
17th
2016

Grammer a Week 18: Parenthetical Phrases · 9:46pm Mar 17th, 2016

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the parenthetical phrase. Chances are you've used this construction before. You might know it as an aside or an interruption in thought. Past merely defining it, this post will also be about the subtleties of the parenthetical phrase.

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May
2nd
2015

Grammer a Week 12: Subject-Verb Agreement · 3:49am May 2nd, 2015

This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about subject-verb agreement. You might find it strange that I'm doing a blog post on something as simple as this. But believe me when I say that even a topic as basic as subjects agreeing with their verbs are easier to get wrong than you might suspect. And yes, for you sharp-eyed readers out there, that previous sentence contained such

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Viewing 1 - 20 of 23 results