Helpful Articles on English Grammar Rules and Writing Tips and Advice
We're in the process of writing a series of articles to help you with English grammar, punctuation, spelling, and writing style. We'll be updating with new content as frequently as possible, so please check back from time to time!
Just click on the links below to view the articles.
This section of our website was newly created on: Sept 4, 2009.
Last update was: October 14, 2009.
The apostrophe is one of the most commonly misused punctuation marks; the mistakes often wind up on large billboards and signs posted around town - it drives copy editors crazy! The rules for using them properly are actually fairly straightforward though, and I've put together an article explaining how to use them.
This is an article written by well-known (and my favourite) author, C. J. Cherryh. I think following her advice will really help to strengthen your English writing technique. You can find her website at www.cherryh.com.
It is very common to find errors in the use of pronouns - including in print, song lyrics, and even the evening news. If you've ever heard someone say something like "That boat belongs to Dave and I", and thought something didn't sound quite right, your intuition is spot-on. If you think that sentence is perfectly fine, please read the article!
The above example, of course, should read "That boat belongs to Dave and me."
Some would argue that the writing in blogs is intended to be off-the-cuff and informal, and therefore errors and poor English are quite acceptable. I believe that nothing could be further from the truth, and that your blog readership and popularity can be negatively impacted by a lack of proper copy editing and proofreading. Follow the link to find out why!
Many people find English to be a difficult language to master, and one of the reasons for that is the number of words that have a variety of completely different meanings and spellings yet are pronounced identically. These types of words are called Homonyms (and are broken down into two sub-categories called homophones and homographs). We'll explain what the different types of homonyms are and will explore the most common examples of these over a number of short articles.
The second article on common Homonyms, including a link to a pretty interesting website with a very extensive list of Homonyms.
Can the quality of your writing affect your website's search engine rankings? We believe it can be a factor - find out why and what you can do about it!
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