The reader must understand that they are at the mercy of the author’s imagination.
What’s wrong with the sentence above? Some might say there is nothing at all is wrong with it. Others, however, will take issue with the use of ‘they,’ a plural pronoun, in place of the singular ‘reader.’ How can this sentence be corrected? Some would use ‘he’ in place of ‘they,’ with the understanding that masculine pronouns are a stand-in for proper nouns of either gender.
Language is constantly evolving – a fact made especially clear when we take a look at historical documents and note how writing norms have shifted over the years. The further back we go, the bigger the shift. The Declaration of Independence, for example, represents a version of English that is noticeably different than that which we use to communicate today.
What are the main grammatical differences between Thomas Jefferson’s version of English and our own?
Academia teaches us to use proper nouns, pronouns, and punctuation, but what about other types of writing? What about types of writing, like fiction or poetry, which capture a reader in ways beyond the period or comma?
April is National Poetry Month, and a great time to help writers to answer these questions — even if in an intangible way. For example, to strict grammarians, poetry may seem as though it has no rules.
In the United States, April 15 is Tax Day, the Internal Revenue Service’s tax filing deadline. While filing taxes can cause stress and frustration, language lovers can find some solace in these creative idioms about money. Here are three of our favorites:
Bet one’s bottom dollar Your “bottom dollar” is the last dollar you have. If you’re betting your bottom dollar, you’re probably very sure that what you’re betting on will turn out the way you think it will.
How many emails do you send per day? With over 200 billion emails going out every single day, there’s a good chance at least a couple of them are coming from you. But if you’re not structuring your emails properly, you may be making both your and your recipient’s lives more difficult than they need to be.
Whether you’re asking for customer support, planning a party, or sending a work email, the following tips will help you craft efficient and effective emails that actually get things done.
It seems that people not only care about using grammar, but also about using it correctly.
(Photo source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/104421575/notebook-dear-people-of-the-world)
On Monday, we ran an informal poll on our Facebook page. After a recent article in the Huffington post discussing an increased demand for grammar study in education, we asked our followers: “Do you think studying grammar in school is important?” The results were unsurprising, but overwhelmingly one-sided.
Along with loose and definitely, separate is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language. Separate can be an adjective or a verb. As an adjective, it means set apart, distinct, or not related. As a verb, it means to to set apart, to distinguish, or to divide. Separate is often misspelled as seperate, a word that has no meaning and is simply a misspelling:
