Tag: grammar
group name: grammarweasel
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June 13, 2008 07:10 AM EDT --
You're just writing along, trying to meet your deadline. You certainly don't mean to hurt anyone. But then, without even thinking about it, you've done it... you've dangled a participle. . . .
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June 13, 2008 10:55 PM EDT --
In this post we're going to explore something you may use all the time in your writing—probably without even knowing it. I'm talking about the absolute phrase .
Basically, an absolute . . .
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June 22, 2008 02:00 AM EDT --
You probably know that if you accidentally type, say, aobut or Febuary in a Word document, squiggly little red underlining will alert you to your mistake. Then you just select the offending word and . . .
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June 13, 2008 11:00 PM EDT --
Passive Resistance
In this post we'll begin to examine the dreaded critiquing mark of passive .
"Passive-ness" has received excessive and perhaps undue scrutiny in the . . .
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July 28, 2008 12:44 AM EDT --
German may be a tough language to learn, but they did make it easy on us in one aspect: all nouns are capitalized. You never have to beat your Brain against your Skull wondering whether this Word or that . . .
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September 20, 2009 12:45 PM EDT --
How about a quick quiz? Answers below.
1. Shoplifting is an (everyday, every day) occurrence. 2. It happens almost (everyday, every day).
3. We sang the passage (altogether, . . .
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June 13, 2008 07:18 AM EDT --
In Part I we explored dangling participles . Recall that a participle is a verb form that acts like an adjective , and a dangling participle describes a noun which is not in the sentence . Can you . . .
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June 13, 2008 01:44 PM EDT --
My previous posts taught how to correct dangling participles. This time we'll look at some other common errors that crop up with participial phrases.
Remember our device for checking whether a . . .
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June 22, 2008 08:58 PM EDT --
In my earlier post 22 Reasons Not To Trust Spell-Check , I gave you a test: Replace each (?) with the appropriate word from the following list.
I know (?) no way that Porsche could be (?). . . .
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June 13, 2008 11:12 PM EDT --
In the "Passive Resistance" articles , we learned how to recognize some of the passive voice's many disguises and how to deal with them. While the techniques varied, the result was always . . .
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June 23, 2008 04:54 PM EDT --
In the last post I offered you a challenge: to type the word 'til in MS Word . . . with a properly curving apostrophe. If you tried it, you probably typed 'til (note the mark is actually . . .
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July 06, 2008 10:40 PM EDT --
You're just writing along, trying to meet your deadline. You certainly don't mean to hurt anyone. But then, without even thinking about it, you've done it... you've dangled a participle. . . .
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July 29, 2008 10:04 AM EDT --
Here's a quick overview of the helpful articles on grammar and writing now available at The Grammar Weasel :
Dangling Participles (series of 2 articles)
Participial Phrases
Absolute . . .
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June 13, 2008 11:06 PM EDT --
In Part I we learned that a sentence with a passive-voice verb takes the form:
A was/were B -ed
where A is a subject receiving action (rather than performing it) and B is . . .
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June 16, 2008 10:20 AM EDT --
Earlier I promised a long-awaited distinction between passive voice and passive writing —or more specifically, passive verbs . Passive voice describes a sentence in which the subject receives . . .
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June 16, 2008 11:23 AM EDT --
I ended my last post with a curious sentence:
But was and were , along with all the to-be verbs, are the source of many grammatical misunderstandings.
Or, simplified: . . .
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August 13, 2008 01:14 PM EDT --
Previous post: Total Ellipse
In typing ellipses, you might have noticed that three consecutive periods triggers an autocorrect feature in Word. It converts “period-period-period” into . . .
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December 01, 2009 01:43 PM EST --
The first decade of this millennium is ending. So isn’t it about time we knew what it was called?
(I know that my first statement is technically untrue on the grounds that, since there . . .
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June 16, 2008 10:28 AM EDT --
Last post we discussed the evils of the unofficial passive verbs was and were . We've already seen how to dispense with these verbs in association with the passive voice . . .
Miss . . .
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June 16, 2008 10:56 AM EDT --
Last post I asked you to evaluate the verb usage in the following sentence:
After capturing Dr. Maybe, Agent Pi was being a self-centered jerk.
Maybe you noticed that per the . . .
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