Grammar
Tips, rules and guidelines on grammar best practices.
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Use Clichés to Find Your Theme
How Do You Start Your Memoir? You start with an idea — that magical moment when something sparks the desire to write. It might be a title that suddenly pops into your head, a concept that lights you up, a lightbulb moment, a realization or epiphany that lets all the puzzle pieces of your life fall into place. However it happens, you are inspired and you want to write your story. For the most part, you likely already have a rough notion of what story you want to tell. It’s about a character (you) who has experienced events which illustrate a universal truth, a life lesson or message you…
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Letters
Gotta love letters — A. B. C.’s. Without ‘em, our civilization wouldn’t exist. Other languages – other letters: Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Chinese pictographs, Druidic runes, Egyptian hieroglyphs. Throughout history, in all cultures, somehow, someone has figured out a way to record our activities in a more permanent way than fickle memory allows. The alphabet used in many modern language groups is made up of 26 letters and has the most versatility, as it doesn’t rely on the principle of one symbol, one concept. Our alphabet, our letters, derive from Latin. The modern English alphabet consists of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The alphabet’s current form originated in about the 7th…
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National Grammar Day
Though a proud member of the Grammar Police, I’m as guilty as anyone for breaking the rules of grammar and punctuation when necessary. However, I strongly believe it’s important to know what those rules are so you can break them intentionally and not simply through ignorance. In the past several years, particularly since global travel has become so accessible and the use of cellphones and the internet have become so all-pervasive, there’s been a wholesale butchering of the English language. I can’t help but wonder how our language will evolve, now that we have instant global communication. Will we all end up speaking one global language? Will emojis take over…
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The Relevance of Good Grammar
How many different skills have you learned in your lifetime? I’ll bet, if you count them all up, you’ll find you have hundreds, maybe even thousands of life-skills. Many of these skills are acquired by a sort of unconscious osmosis, through societal culture, family habits and traditions or sheer trial and error. Others are the ones you’ll have consciously developed, the better to get a job or a date, be more attractive to the opposite sex, speak more clearly or learn another language, master a hobby or career, even overcome a disability or illness. From the time we’re conceived, we grow and change. From the time we’re born, we…