Wednesday, June 29, 2011
No more serial commas?!
This article put a kink in my day. A moment of silence for the serial comma – except when needed to resolve ambiguity, of course. I'll miss it. What about you?
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Loose & Lose
The words this week aren't homophones. But I felt compelled to include them because as I find writers absentmindedly interchanging them, it's become my second-biggest grammatical pet peeve*. These two words are completely different – they have different spellings, different pronunciations, and different meanings. They're simply not related. But what does that matter to the careless writer? They both pass spell-check, don't they?
* In case you're wondering, "must of" is #1.
* In case you're wondering, "must of" is #1.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Moose & Mousse
This was a classic homophone in middle school – when spiked, moussed hair was the shit, and no animal embodied the awkward gangliness of adolescence quite like the knobby-kneed moose.
Of course, mousse is also that whipped treat, not quite ice cream, not quite pudding – the puberty of desserts, if you will.
Of course, mousse is also that whipped treat, not quite ice cream, not quite pudding – the puberty of desserts, if you will.
