The Breakdown on Brackets
Brackets are components of punctuation that are often misunderstood. People either use them too much when they get so caught up in side notes that the entire sentence loses direction, or they’re not...
Waste vs. Waist: Know Which to Throw Away and Which to Put a Belt Around
Having come across this mistake on more than one occasion recently, we thought it was worth bringing some attention to. This is an example where autocorrect won’t catch your mistake. So, here are these...
How To Correct People Without Being Pompous
There is a time and place to summon the grammar police. If you’re always correcting people on their misuses and misspellings, then you become that guy. And no one likes him. But there are times when...
Don’t Let A Typo Ruin Your Reputation
Although they come off as tiny, insignificant, miniscule mistakes, typos are far from that. It can happen to the best of us. As we’re typing away at lightning speed, we forget to add the apostrophe in...
Tips To Stay Focused While Editing
Staying focused on a single task without getting distracted can be challenging—especially when you don’t have someone standing over your shoulder. Left to our own devices, this can prove to be quite...
The Importance of Reading for Writers
Just like visiting art galleries helps artists hone their craft, the same goes for reading for writers. Of all languages ever spoken, English contains the most words (over 250,000). That leaves us with...
Incorrectness: When It’s OK To Be Intentionally Wrong
Sometimes it’s OK to use words that aren’t real words or be grammatically wrong on purpose. Whether for stylistic reasons of for comedic effect, there are times when you can get away with being deliberately...
Conjunction, What’s Your Function?
Conjunctions are a quintessential part of our everyday language. Being one of the nine parts of speech (along with nouns, verbs, articles and such) their job is to connect. Unfortunately, conjunctions...
Beware the Buzzword
We’re all guilty of throwing a buzzword in here and there. And with their prevalence in everyday language nowadays, it’s hard not to use them. So what are they? Buzzwords are industry terms that sound...
Wave vs. Waive and Waver vs. Waiver
You’ve got to love those crafty homophones. For this month’s vs. post, we thought we would offer up a two-for-one. Wave, waive, waver and waiver all sound similar, and it’ll help to keep you on your...
Tips for Dealing with Tight Writing Deadlines
The dreaded deadline: it’s a writer’s worst enemy. And the best plug to stop the flow of creative juices. Whether you write professionally or as a student, you’re faced with deadlines; and the anxiety,...
5 of the Most Common Grammar Mistakes
The world of grammar encompasses a wide range of language rules and an even wider range of ways to mess those rules up. If you’ve ever written anything longer than a few sentences, you’ve probably...