grammar Archives - Words by a Pro

Stop Alienating Your Readers! Choose the Right POV

Greg Hill — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 19:50:55 +0000

I was checking out one of the educational marketing courses offered at the HubSpot Academy the other day when I was struck dumb. Dumbstruck, even. The lesson I was watching involved content marketing and the choices writers face when drafting copy. Things started out fine. HubSpot explained that one of the first decisions a writer […]

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The Flavours of English

Morris Vaughan — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 21:25:28 +0000

In the 1964 movie My Fair Lady, excruciatingly British phonetics professor Henry Higgins worries about the fate of the English language. “In America,” he observes, “they haven’t used it for years.” If you write or edit English prose for hire, you may be called upon to ensure a piece follows the spelling, grammar, and punctuation […]

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Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

Susan Metzger — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:57:35 +0000

“Huh?” you may ask yourself. “I kinda remember hearing those words in high school English class, but I have no idea what they mean,” you may answer. The robber was described as a six-foot-tall man with a mustache weighing 150 pounds. Funny, right? What weighed 150 pounds—the robber or the mustache? This sentence reads as […]

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Is Sentence Length a True Indicator of Readability?

Morris Vaughan — Tue, 23 May 2017 21:03:33 +0000

Have you ever been reading something and reached the end of a sentence, then had to start reading the sentence again because you forgot what it was about? Do you think it was simply because it was a long sentence? Or were there other reasons? We are often told that short sentences are more readable […]

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Questions for a Language Ninja: Overused Words and Slaying that Content

Holly Troupe — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 22:22:14 +0000

Q: What would you say are the most overused words from the past year? I nominate “pivot.” Yes, the word “pivot” – a word that was previously only used in osteopathic and Jazz dance applications – has been tossed around quite brutally, particularly on cable news channels. The Ninja agrees that as an indication of […]

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Style Guides & Manuals: What Are They?

Susan Metzger — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 20:42:33 +0000

Perhaps your high school English teacher told you about style guides, but maybe you didn’t even come across them until college when your English Composition instructor informed you, “You must use MLA style or fail this course.” I have said it, and other instructors have insisted on APA or Chicago (Turabian) Style as the style […]

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Questions for a Language Ninja: Does Being “Turnt” Require Antibiotics?

Holly Troupe — Tue, 27 Dec 2016 22:05:04 +0000

The Language Ninja explains the meanings of a newfangled millennial slang term. Welcome to the final Language Ninja column for the year 2016, which – and I’m sure many of you will agree – will certainly be regarded as one of the top 20 worst years in the history of humankind. (We lost David Bowie […]

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Grammar Rules: A Lesson on “However”

Susan Metzger — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 20:54:10 +0000

It’s a little tricky. Many amateur writers use the word however incorrectly. The most common mistake—and we see it way too often—is using it as if it were a coordinating conjunction. A coordinating conjunction joins elements of equal grammatical rank. In middle or high school, you may have been given the mnemonic device FANBOYS. It […]

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To Stress or Not to Stress? A Primer on the Music of Language

Greg Hill — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 22:04:12 +0000

Ahh, the music of language. We’ve all heard the phrase before, but many of us haven’t given much thought to what it actually means. Is it how words sound? The “flow” of a sentence? Or something more? There are plenty of factors at work that can explain the musicality of a language, but today I’d […]

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Questions for a Language Ninja: Ain’t “Ain’t” Proper?

Holly Troupe — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 00:44:46 +0000

Q: If there’s a place in the linguistic world for the words “sexting”, “twerk”, and “totes”, why can’t we finally accept “ain’t”? It’s been in common usage for centuries. When will “ain’t” finally be recognized as a legitimate word? A: Art and popular culture will never stop trying to elevate “ain’t” from its lowly state. […]

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