Back in the 60s, I went to a private women’s college (now coed) in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn. My college is only a few blocks away from a prestigious art school, the Pratt Institute. Pratt was featured in the New York Times yesterday not – as you might expect – for an artistic [...]

I just read an intriguing article by James Harbeck about nine confusing ways to pluralize words: http://shar.es/jhtCX. Adding an s (bird, birds) is the most common way to do plurals in English – but there are others. Some are leftovers from earlier forms of our language: man, men and ox, oxen, along with others. (Did [...]

Source: arcamax.com via Jean on Pinterest   Is Rat using a split infinitive? Yes (“to periodically nod my head”). Is he incorrect? Of course not. The split infinitive prohibition arose from a mistaken attempt to make English (a Germanic language) similar to Latin. They’re distant cousins, and what works for Latin doesn’t work for English. [...]

Source: gocomics.com via Jean on Pinterest   In today’s “Off the Mark” comic strip, a sentence starts with but. Are writers allowed to do that? Yes! Every great writer does it. Every magazine and newspaper does it. The US Constitution does it, Hemingway did it, and so did Shakespeare. Inaugural addresses do it, and does [...]

Source: arcamax.com via Jean on Pinterest   Today’s “Baby Blues” comic strip stopped me short when I first read it. “Triggers” in the fourth panel sounds wrong. Shouldn’t the verb be changed to “trigger”? I spent some time thinking about it, and the answer I came up with is…I’m not sure. I guess you could [...]

Source: arcamax.com via Jean on Pinterest   You won’t find “binky” in any dictionary. Is binky a word? Yes! Any group of sounds with a consistent meaning is a word. If enough moms and dads keep using the word “binky” (which means “pacifier”), it will eventually find its way into a dictionary. That’s how all [...]

And what better way to honor punctuation than watching Victor Borge do his famous phonetic punctuation? Have fun! (To learn more about punctuation, click here.)

Source: slagoon.com via Jean on Pinterest   Take a look at the last panel, where the crab says, “I’d like to officially retract my previous ‘fatso’ reference.” “To officially retract” is a split infinitive (meaning that a word – “officially” – has been inserted into an infinitive – “to retract.”) Are split infinitives ok? Yes. [...]

Today’s comics page features three (count ‘em!) strips with a misplaced only error. (It’s easy to fix.) Source: gocomics.com via Jean on Pinterest   The knight in today’s Wizard of Id didn’t mean that his health insurance “only covers” stab wounds (meaning it doesn’t do other things, like heal them). He should have said, “My [...]

Source: nuless.org via Jean on Pinterest   This Beetle Bailey comic strip from 2007 illustrates why good writers NEVER use “in conclusion,” “finally,” and similar transitional words. The problem? Your readers and listeners won’t pay any notice to your point: What they’re really focusing on is that you’re almost finished. Better transitional words include “most important,” [...]