A while back, the folks at Write in New Zealand talked about punctuating bullet lists. The post caught my attention because their practice is refreshingly straightforward. If the stem sentence and the list items are all complete sentences, we punctuate with an initial capital and a full stop. If the stem sentence is an introductory…
Related articles A little fun related to the Oxford comma (proswrite.com) A light-hearted lesson on the Oxford comma (proswrite.com) The Oxford comma: Decried, defended, and debated [infographic] (holykaw.alltop.com) OnlineSchools.com Infographic Debates the Use of the Oxford Comma (prweb.com) The Best Shots Fired in the Oxford Comma Wars (mentalfloss.com)
I’m working on a post about taboo words (that means swearing or profanity) that’s not ready for prime time — and recovering from the flu. In the meantime, I highly recommend today’s post over at Motivated Grammar. Gabe’s point is that, when people don’t actually understand how language works, they see decline and deterioration in language different…
Last week, I wrote that subject-verb disagreement matters because it signals a serious breach in etiquette. And that distracts business readers. Relatively few of my former students (or writers for whom I served as editor) have committed the faux pas in the writing they have done for me. But, for those amateur writers who do struggle with subject-verb disagreement,…
If you have known or followed me for long, you know I am no grammar nazi. As I wrote recently, If my students’ language signals they may not pass inside the gate where professionals reside, I never tell them they’re wrong. I do sometimes tell them their language will elicit negative attention from more than a…
Yesterday’s post, Language choices can be unsuccessful — but never wrong, raised a few eyebrows. For some of you, my belief that language can never be wrong contradicts with my belief that I can prepare students for writing successfully in the workplace. The apparent contradition deserves an explanation. So today’s post is about grammar rules. (I’ll get…
I recently found a marvelous video of Stephen Fry talking about language. Here’s what the creater (Matthew Rogers) says about his video: Using the wonderful words of acclaimed writer, actor and allround know it all (I mean that in the best of ways) Stephen Fry, I have created this kinetic typography animation. . . I loved this particular essay on…
I shared my position on the use of short lectures in a writing class a couple of days ago. But I told only part of the story from the video lecture-tutorial + teaching note that will be published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Education. The amateurs in my courses depend on me to make a professional’s tacit…
I am NOT going to talk politics here. But check out Lucy Ferriss’ Of periods, serifs, and politics in the Chronicle of Higher Education today for an interesting interpretation of Obama’s campaign slogan. the dot at the end of the word is less a full stop than a bit of bling, like that light at the end of…
Research has clearly established that the vast majority of US business readers notice only two punctuation infelicities — even in formal documents. Today I am sharing a video tutorial to help those amateurs who struggle with the two issues that elicit the most negative attention: comma splices: using a comma to mark a sentence boundary sentence fragments:…