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5 Grammar Rules That Show Off Your Smarts. English grammar confuses the best of us.

5 Grammar Rules That Show Off Your Smarts

Native English speakers have the luxury of knowing by ear that he sees, I see, and they see are correct but will mix up who and whom. Professional writers rarely memorize every grammar rule; rather, they review them from time to time to ensure they apply the rules correctly. Make like a professional writer and show off your grammar smarts by correctly applying the following five grammar rules to your writing.

Grammar rule #1: Know the difference between lie and lay. Lie and lay are often confused by speakers and writers. The chips lie on the counter. Lay takes a direct object: Please lay the chips on the counter. 5 Ways to Abuse a Comma - Grammarly Blog. Commas are finally receiving high praise.

5 Ways to Abuse a Comma - Grammarly Blog

Teachers stress their role in helping readers discern the correct meaning of sentences. In fact, an entire line of T-shirts is based on how essential these little punctuation marks are. “Let’s eat Grandma. Let’s eat, Grandma.” Do you notice how the comma changes the meaning of the two phrases? 5 Reasons Why You Should Write a Book. Join us in a city near you at Entrepreneur’s Accelerate Your Business event series kicking off Feb 23.

5 Reasons Why You Should Write a Book

View cities and dates » Writing not only does so much for you. It does a lot to you! Related: 7.1 Steps to Writing Your Book In fact, every author I’ve met has become a better person since writing his or her book(s). Writing a book is also an easy task to delay. Mary Karr On Writing Memoirs: 'No Doubt I've Gotten A Million Things Wrong' Author Mary Karr says she once broke her computer's delete key while writing a memoir.

Mary Karr On Writing Memoirs: 'No Doubt I've Gotten A Million Things Wrong'

Deborah Feingold/HarperCollins hide caption toggle caption Deborah Feingold/HarperCollins Author Mary Karr says she once broke her computer's delete key while writing a memoir. Deborah Feingold/HarperCollins. Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing. By Maria Popova In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her commandments.

Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing

After Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing, here come 8 from the one and only Neil Gaiman: WritePut one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.Finish what you’re writing. Be a better writer in 15 minutes: 4 TED-Ed lessons on grammar and word choice. There’s no denying it — the English language can be mighty tricky.

Be a better writer in 15 minutes: 4 TED-Ed lessons on grammar and word choice

When writing a paper, a novel or even an e-mail, you might look at a sentence you just wrote and think, “Is that comma supposed to be there?” Or “Is that really the best word to use?” Fear not! TED-Ed has put together a list of four of our favorite grammar and language lessons to get your next piece of writing in tip-top shape. 8 ways a simple notebook can change your life. Go buy a notebook Many people have written to me saying they love all the research on bettering themselves but need that first step on how to shoehorn it in to their day-to-day life.

8 ways a simple notebook can change your life

Incorporating a lot of the blog's strategies can be as easy as buying a notebook. (No, it doesn't need to have glitter on it or say "MY SECRET DIARY" on the front.) Others might think: "I don't need to write stuff down. Reading is enough. " Nope. A lot of research shows your brain sees writing differently than thinking or talking. Writing forces you to organize and clarify your thoughts. So what should you be writing in this notebook? 1) Write down what you're looking forward to. This writer is writing a novel. Live. Online. Right now. You can pretty much like and comment on any media you consume these days — except books.

This writer is writing a novel. Live. Online. Right now.

Lucky for my fellow social media addicts, one author’s out to change that. Joshua Cohen, an author whose essays have been in The New York Times and Harper’s, is currently writing a novel online. And not only can we see his progress as he works, we can like and comment as we see fit too. (Because live-tweeting a book is so 2014, apparently.)

Comma story - Terisa Folaron. 20 Misused Words That Make Smart People Look Dumb  Grammar quiz: Do you know the passive voice? One "rule" that many self-appointed experts on writing return to again and again is: "Don't use the passive!

Grammar quiz: Do you know the passive voice?

" Or, as some puckishly put it, "The passive voice should be avoided. " The passive voice is often disliked because it can be used to evade responsibility: "Mistakes were made. " However, not every construction that avoids pinning blame uses the passive voice, and not every use of the passive voice avoids pinning blame. Sometimes the passive is the better choice because you want to put the focus on the receiver of the action. And sometimes people criticize sentences for being in the passive voice when they actually aren't. Learn Your Damn Homophones. SpecGram—Cartoon Theories of Linguistics—Part ж—The Trouble with NLP—Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D.

SpecGram >> Vol CLIII, No 4 >> Cartoon Theories of Linguistics—Part ж—The Trouble with NLP—Phineas Q.

SpecGram—Cartoon Theories of Linguistics—Part ж—The Trouble with NLP—Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D.

Phlogiston, Ph.D. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn Please review previously discussed materials as needed. When to use i.e. in a sentence. How to Write Strong Arguments at The CreateDebate Blog. Twelve Words You Didn't Know You Were Mispronouncing. When we were young, we made the common mistake of pronouncing a word before we'd actually heard it -- which is why we're very thankful that someone eventually took us aside to inform us that "epitome" doesn't actually rhyme with "metronome. " And since we live in the age of the neologism, there are more new words to mangle than ever.

25 Reasons Not to Trust Spell-Check When Job Hunting. You've probably pored (or is it poured?) Over your resume and cover letter hundreds of times, fine-tuning them, updating them, making sure they're so perfect that even the most trained eye could find nary a mistake. Pragmatics. First published Tue Nov 28, 2006; substantive revision Mon Mar 21, 2011 These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — may or may not be fair to diplomats, but are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘no’ each has a perfectly identifiable meaning, known by every speaker of English (including not very competent ones).

However, as those lines illustrate, it is possible for different speakers in different circumstances to mean different things using those words. 1. Pragmatics deals with utterances, by which we will mean specific events, the intentional acts of speakers at times and places, typically involving language. Twenty-one Reasons Why English Is Hard to Learn - That was funny.

Verbal (ir)regularity.