Friday, October 28, 2011

Hoping vs. Hopping

Even though the difference in spelling between hoping and hopping is just one letter, the difference in meaning is actually much bigger. All you need to do is hope and hop to see how big a difference it is.

What Is the Difference Between Hoping and Hopping?

When you look up the definition of hoping and the definition of hopping, you notice that they have one thing in common—both are present participles.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

10 Kids’ Grammar and Pronunciation Mistakes Too Cute to Correct

By Laura Wallis for The Stir by CafeMom

All parents have mental lists of this stuff—their kids’ hilarious mispronunciations and malapropisms that were so darn cute they couldn’t bear to set them straight. We polled a bunch of parents for some of their favorite examples.

By the way, this is what baby books were made for: Enjoy the quirks and write them down before you forget. (Or, even better, make some audio recordings!) There’s plenty of time for corrections later.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

24 of the Most Basic Grammar Rules

Have you mastered these basic grammar rules? If you’d like to answer yes, review your knowledge with the articles below. You might be surprised at how many rules you remember and how many rules you still need to learn.

The nouns that pronouns replace are antecedents. The antecedents must correspond to the nouns they refer to in gender and number.

What are some of the most commonly confused phrases in English and how can you say them correctly?

Friday, October 21, 2011

Hot Off the Presses: New changes to the AP Stylebook

The Associated Press Stylebook is a guide for style and usage in written news reporting. Why do writers need a style guide? A style guide helps writers know what the rules are: whether the Oxford comma should be used or not, when to spell out numerals, how to capitalize the names of organizations, etc. Writers may use other style guides in different situations, including the Chicago Manual of Style and the American Medical Association Manual of Style.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Apologise or Apologize?

  • Apologize is the standard American English spelling.
  • Apologise is the standard British English spelling.

Wouldn’t it be embarrassing to have a spelling error in a letter of apology? And it’s even more cringe-worthy if the word you spell wrong is one of the key elements of your message! So before you say you’re sorry, find out whether apologize or apologise is the right word.

To understand the issue better, let’s break down apology into its parts.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

5 Reasons the Writing World 
Should Celebrate Dyslexia

Guest Post by Doug Sprei and Jules Johnson, LearningAlly.org

For many people with dyslexia, writing and spelling are some of the most challenging activities in daily life. And yet in the midst of this difficulty, a world of creative thinking is awakened. Some of the most acclaimed authors, business leaders, scientists, and innovators are dyslexic. The next time you switch on a light bulb or reach for a favorite book, consider the following reasons that dyslexia is something to be celebrated.

Monday, October 17, 2011

How Language Represents Color

Every language represents colors with different words. Linguists have found some interesting patterns in how colors are represented in language. Let’s look at some of their most intriguing findings.

Predictable Sets of Colors

All languages distinguish colors. However, some languages represent colors in only two basic groups. Linguists found that all languages that have only two color distinctions base them on black (or dark) and white (or light).