Nov 21, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Conjunctions, such as and, but, or, and so, can make a difference in the meaning of your sentence. Be sure to choose the right one. Conjunctions are connecting words that express a relationship between two elements (words, clauses, or phrases). You tend to pay little...
Oct 29, 2019 | Communication, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Language traditionalists bristle when people use nouns as verbs and vice versa, but such conversions have a long history in English. Just be careful about using new forms that readers might interpret as sloppiness. Many people are convinced that words are one part of...
Oct 24, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar, Uncategorized
Helping verbs (is, are, was, were, will be, etc.) often are necessary to express a point in time (verb tense), but you can strengthen your sentence by stripping them when they are unnecessary. Write with strong verbs, a valuable piece of wisdom for centuries,...
Oct 20, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
To make your writing a little tighter and more snappy, become friends with the semicolon. The semicolon is a misunderstood punctuation mark. Some people have a strange notion that a semicolon is for academic writing or that it is used by people trying to look...
Sep 23, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar, Uncategorized
Where to use commas and semicolons can be challenging in many sentences, but how to punctuate around because and however can cause considerable head scratching. A comma before “because” Punctuation marks are not little black marks that we randomly sprinkle...
Sep 4, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Excessive capitalization is widespread in business, particularly in job titles. Know when it’s appropriate to capitalize. People frequently uppercase a word because they saw it capitalized elsewhere, because it “looks right,” or because they just...