“I think people should elect a cat person. If you elect a dog person, you elect someone who wants to be loved. If you elect a cat person, you elect someone who wants to serve.”—Stephen Harper. Interview with Kevin Newman, Global National April 5th, 2006. With this statement, Stephen Harper has let the cat out … More Cat People/Dog People
Learning grammar is like learning refrigeration repair. At some point you have to learn the names of the parts. One essential piece of grammatical terminology is the clause. A clause has to have at least one subject and one verb. Here’s an example of a clause: Ron sleeps. Ron is the subject, and sleeps is … More Punctuating Simple and Compound Sentences
“The plural of anecdote is not data.” ― Marc Bekoff
Less/Fewer Nothing whips grammar purists into a frothing frenzy more than supposed errors in the use of “less” and “fewer.” The rule is pretty simple: use “less” with non-count nouns: less sugar; use “fewer: with count nouns: fewer cups of sugar. It’s an easy rule to follow. But little complications crop up. One can have … More Less/Fewer
Only one of the following sentences is correct. Can you spot the errors in the others? If Tom would have been there, he would have known what to do. Edmonton is colder than almost city in Canada. Garth skipped the party, which was stupid. Brad was both interested and repelled by the idea of eating … More Spotting Errors
“When members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning to interpret a particularly difficult passage of Sordello, he read it twice, frowned,and then admitted, ‘When I wrote that, God and I knew what I meant, but now God alone knows.’ Rather than risk sounding dense, readers, colleagues, and critics who can’t figure out what a … More Quote of the Day
Here are three important ways to reduce wordiness in your writing: Avoid expletive constructions such as “there is” and “there are.” Prefer active to passive voice. “A wordy bureaucrat strangled three grammarians last night” is a better sentence than “There were three grammarians who were strangled by a wordy bureaucrat last night.” Avoid nominalizations. … More The Plague of Wordiness
No Harm Spilt 