Most people believe that English grammar is simply English grammar. There is a right way and a wrong way to construct a sentence, a right place and a wrong place to put a comma, words that go together and words that don’t. For the most part, this is true. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tiny rules that native speakers instinctively know and follow when communicating. What most people don’t realize is how mutable some of these rules are, and how others are not, and where the differences lie.
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Posts Tagged ‘grammar’
How Many Kinds of Grammar Are There Really?
Good Grammar Survives the Texting Age
Seemingly overnight, texting has altered how people use grammar. “Techspeak” is creeping into the personal and the business environment. It’s become a grammar free-for-all where punctuation has disappeared and capitalization is MIA. In speeding down the information superhighway, it is important to not get pulled over by the grammar police. Following grammar sends the message that you are knowledgeable and professional despite operating in an increasingly informal world.
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Breathe in, breathe out. With a comma.
If you want to communicate your written message clearly, then you owe it to yourself, and your audience, to be purposeful about punctuation. Take the comma. Used correctly, it can help your readers navigate their way through some of your most sophisticated prose. Used effectively, it can add a subtle pause to accentuate your point.
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Don’t Leave ‘Em Dangling
Here’s something to avoid in your written communications. Inexperienced writers (and even some experienced ones!) occasionally make dangling participle errors. Sound like something your high-school English teacher would say? Maybe, but professionals do not dare to make errors like these. Professional-level writing requires a professional-level understanding of grammar and clarity.
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Speech Versus Writing—One Pitfall of Not Knowing the Difference
Consider this: casual writing arises from casual speaking. We naturally use a lot of contractions in our speech, most often without thinking about them. (A contraction is the mashing together of a noun and verb am/is/are.) You’re (you are) and they’re (they are) are ubiquitous in speech, and they also lead to some of the most common—and damaging—writing mistakes.
Want to shoot yourself in the foot? Use your in your copy when you actually mean you are or you’re. And don’t confuse they’re with their or there. It’s a common mistake because they sound the same, but there is no quicker way to torpedo your communicative efforts.
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Website Traffic and SEO
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