Today we're going to talk about keeping a journal. If you're an aspiring writer, you've probably heard that writers should keep a writing journal. The first time I kept a real writing journal was in my freshman English class in college, so since it's...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is sentence length. This episode was written by guest writer, Bonnie Trenga, author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier. I was glad to hear from those of you who enjoyed Bonnie's writing last week. I'll be b...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is sentence fragments. I often imagine that listeners are writing articles and essays and books, but I was recently reminded that some people make their living writing shorter things like headlines and ad copy, and th...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is semicolons. I get questions about semicolons a lot, so it's time to clear up some confusion. Semicolons separate things. Most commonly, they separate two main clauses that are closely related to each other but that...
by Mignon Fogarty In this week's article, I'm going to share some of the funniest stories people have told me about errors that went out in e-mail messages and published materials. The reason I have so many funny stories to share is that a few days a...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is how to format questions. You think you already know this, don't you? I wonder if you're right. Everybody knows how write a plain vanilla question: What's new? They're called direct questions. But there are trickier...
by Mignon Fogarty Today's topic is proofreading. Here's a question from Corinne that's pertinent to a news story that came out yesterday: I have always had a problem of with my writing I forget the word the or I forget to put an ed on the end of a wo...
Pronouns and Their Antecedents Today were going to talk about pronouns that don't clearly match up with the nouns they are supposed to replace. Readers become unhappy when they have to guess what noun a writer is talking about, or readers may even ch...
图片1 Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is verb tense. This episode is a little unusual because I usually deal with topics that can be widely applied to fiction and non-fiction writing, but recently I was on a plane reading Seth Harwood's forthcomin...
Grammar Girl here. Listen up, everyone! Todays topic is phrasal verbs, as in to listen up. And now, guest-writer Bonnie Trenga writes, a listener, Paulino from Minneapolis, would like to know what phrasal verbs are and why they are called that. Phras...
Grammar Girl here. Aliza in Alaska recently asked whether she should use who or that to refer to a board of directors. Today we're going to decide whether companies are people or things; in other words, whether you use the relative pronoun who or tha...
Grammar Girl here. Today I'm inspired by a couple of listener questions. Hi, Grammar Girl. This is Katie, and I was wondering if you could touch on your and you're. There's not a day that goes by that I don't see this grammar mistake. Thanks a lot. K...
Grammar Girl here. Today, guest-writer Bonnie Trenga helps us understand modifiers that come at the beginning of a sentence. Bonnie says, As a guest-writer, I plan to talk about two kinds of troublesome modifiers that begin a sentence. Like many of y...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is mixed metaphors. Politicians often provide good fodder for language commentary, and one of Barack Obama's comments during the debates has been rattling around in my head for a while now. He made a comment that some...
Grammar Girl here. Today's topic is something I am very guilty of doing myself: overusing the words so and very. A listener named Taryn wrote in asking if it is acceptable to write that she is sooooooo happy that she is going to the prom (using so wi...
