Last year, I purchased a Chromebook, and one of the first things I realized at the time was that I had no idea how to type special characters with it, such as the degree symbol (°). I did a bit of research, and I discovered that the trick is using the Unicode for each character. Just… Continue reading How to make a degree symbol on a Chromebook
Category: Punctuation
You don’t always need a comma when using “and”
While recently editing a research proposal I was reminded of a comma error I frequently find myself correcting: always preceding “and” with a comma. Here was the example sentence:
Why text speak has no place in public conversations
Recently, I was reading some comments in a Facebook Group thread, when I came across this comment using textspeak: i have np with ur statement but u have to be objective everyone who does not want to talk about bvs and civil war are free to post something else I want to be careful that… Continue reading Why text speak has no place in public conversations
Do’s and don’ts or dos and don’ts?
I was curating some content for my social media feeds earlier today when I came across the phrase “do’s and don’ts” in the headline of an article about managing social media accounts. I’ve seen this phrase many times, but I’ve also seen it written as “dos and don’ts” and “do’s and don’t’s”. So which is… Continue reading Do’s and don’ts or dos and don’ts?
Do you use ’s to make words plural? Please stop!
Without even trying, it seems I’ve had a bit of a theme in my writing posts recently: writing blunders on social media. Have you read my posts on alot vs a lot and the overuse of the ellipses? It seems I’ll be carrying on this theme with today’s post: the use of the apostrophe when… Continue reading Do you use ’s to make words plural? Please stop!
Why you’re probably using . . . wrong
Back before social media took off and email was the most popular method of communication, something I saw a lot of was the ellipsis.
A run-on sentence is not a very long sentence
A few years ago, when I was working as a writer for a private company, a coworker accused me of writing run-on sentences for YouTube video descriptions. When I reviewed the descriptions, I saw no run-on sentences at all. It turns out, he was referring to sentences he considered too long; they weren’t actually run-on… Continue reading A run-on sentence is not a very long sentence
How to type special characters on your Chromebook
I recently purchased a Chromebook, and one of the first things I realized once I started it up was that I had no idea how to type special characters with it. I did a bit of research, and I discovered that the trick is using the Unicode for each character. Just type Ctrl+Shift+u at the… Continue reading How to type special characters on your Chromebook
Spaces after periods: one or two?
I have edited all sorts of documents over the last 28 years. I couldn’t even begin to count how many pages that’d be. Just in the last year and a half that I’ve been in business full-time, I’ve edited at laest a thousand pages. One common correction I make is changing two spaces following a period to… Continue reading Spaces after periods: one or two?
Why I use the Oxford comma
The Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma) is a comma used before “and” at the end of a list. It’s named after Oxford University Press, which popularized its usage as a way to clarify the meaning of some sentences.