Using Italics and Underlining An Introduction We use italics (characters set in type that slants to the right) and underlining to distinguish certain words from others within the text. These typographical devices mean the same thing; therefore, it would be unusual to use both within the same text and it would certainly be unwise to italicize an underlined word. As word-processors and printers become more sophisticated and their published products more professional looking, italics are accepted by more and more instructors. Still, some instructors insist on underlines (probably because they went to school when italics were either technically difficult or practically unreadable). These rules and suggestions do not apply to newspaper writing, which has its own set of regulations in this matter. Titles Generally, we italicize the titles of things that can stand by themselves. Other titles that we would italicize include the following: Journals and Magazines: Time, U.S. My favorite book is Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
ENG 1001: Paragraph Organization Effective persuasive paragraphs tend to follow the same pattern, and following this pattern can help you support and develop your ideas, unify your paragraphs and essays, and build a convincing argument or interpretation. The diagram below illustrates the different parts of a persuasive paragraph. Four Roles for the Sentences Each sentence should have a specific purpose or role to play in the paragraph, and there are a limited number of roles. Keeping these purposes in mind may help you develop your body paragraphs. The sentences in a persuasive paragraph should be doing one of the following: serving as a topic sentence that presents a specific claim or claims providing specific facts as supporting evidence explaining how the facts support the claim or claims in the topic sentence acting as a transitional sentence into the next body paragraph In general, you do not need to end a body paragraph with a transitional sentence if the next paragraph is the conclusion. Claims and Facts
Why is there a "b" in doubt? - Gina Cooke This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. We all know certain spelling errors are very common, such as miniscule or geneology. But how common exactly, and are they getting more or less common as time goes on? Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. On the history of spelling. by the Rev. Real Spelling www.realspelling.com WordWorks www.wordworkskingston.com Real Spellers www.realspellers.org This is a past TED conversation. For other language and literature lessons from TED-Ed, check out this YouTube playlist:
22frames.com - Search and find captioned / subtitled videos from across the web Hear and see videos with authentic word pronunciations and example sentences. Español: Pronunciación en Inglés con vídeo · Italiano: Pronuncia in inglese con video Português: Pronúncia em Inglês com vídeo · Français: Prononciation en anglais avec la vidéo Press play to watch and hear the speaker use 'salmon,' and then use the instant replay/loop button to review the pronunciation as many times as you need. Search for a word and you'll not only get audio of how to pronounce it, but also tagged videos of real people in real situations naturally speaking and using the word in context. Try it on the left for the word "salmon" which is often mispronounced. Virtual Face-to-Face Pronunciations: With videos like the above, you get to not only hear the word but actually see facial gestures that different people use to produce pronunciations. Non-isolated Pronunciations: In real life, words are typically not pronounced in isolation. Why a pronunciation dictionary? - EmbedPlus Team
How did English evolve? - Kate Gardoqui This is a great story. But really, I made it sound way more simple than it really is. You probably have some questions already, if you’re a critical sort of person. Like: If the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Friesians all conquered areas of Celtic Britain, why is it that England is called England (which comes from Angle-land, the Land of the Angles) and not Saxonland or Juteland? If Old English has not been spoken since before the twelfth century, how do we know what it sounded like? When and how did Old English become the modern language that we speak today? Clearly, there is way more to it. The British Library has many great resources connected with the evolution of the English language and with the earliest complete work of literature in old English, the epic poem Beowulf. This link will bring you to an interactive timeline of the English language starting in the year 1000:
Three anti-social skills to improve your writing - Nadia Kalman E.B. White wrote, “The best writing is rewriting.” With that idea in mind, look at a few of the examples of ineffective dialogue in the blog post, “Bad Dialogue – Bad, Bad Dialogue,” by Beth Hill, at Now, select one example to rewrite and improve. If it’s repetitive, eliminate the repetition. If it’s too formal or stilted, mutter to yourself until you come up with a more natural-sounding version. The author Mark Twain is considered a master of dialogue, but his use of dialect – and particularly his phonetic rendering of African-American speech in the novel Huckleberry Finn – is the subject of controversy. - An overview of various attitudes towards the novel in the PBS teachers’ guide to Huck Finn: - Leslie Gregory’s article, “Finding Jim Behind the Mask,” in Ampersand, available at
Making sense of spelling - Gina Cooke Usually when we spell a word, we only acknowledge the surface structure by naming out the letters: " these tools for understanding spelling in this free video gallery: working with your regular vocabulary or spelling words, study how you can use word sums and/or matrices to connect how words are spelled with what they mean and how they make sense.The English language is rich in homophones, words that sound the same, but have different meanings and thus different spellings. Words like heel and heal or pain and pane are homophones. The spelling short graphic on The Homophone Principle, and investigate the following pairs of homophones:feat ~ feet; meet ~ meat; row ~ roe; mist ~ missed; profit ~ prophet; wine ~ whine; none ~ nun; peace ~ piece; knot ~ not ~ naught; rain ~ rein ~ reign; sense ~ cense ~ cents ~ scents a. What do each of these words mean?
A brief history of plural word...s - John McWhorter Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there’s much more to texting -- linguistically, culturally -- than it seems, and it’s all good news. See his TED Talk. John Hamilton McWhorter V (born 1965) is an American linguist and political commentator.