Grammar

You certainly use a lot of adjectives when you write. But do you know that there is a specific and correct order of adjectives? In its simplest forms, you add an adjective before a noun or plural nouns or after the verb to be. They can add descriptive properties quickly and easily to any noun. Sure, you…

Teaching can be hard work at times. But when I gave my advanced students the “27 Figures of Speech” puzzle, I could sit back and relax for 45 minutes. Sometimes it was even longer, as some of my students were so keen to brainstorm as a group to find every hidden metaphor, simile, and expression.…

Can you start a sentence with but? I am sure you must recall your high school English teacher told you that beginning a sentence with a conjunction was wrong. It was one of the strict grammar rules my teachers drummed into my young head. “Never start a sentence with and or but!” Those were the…

Obviously named after Ernest Hemingway, the Hemingway app is a popular free writing tool created by Adam and Ben Long. Compared to other grammar and spelling checkers and writing software, it is quick, easy, and a much simpler alternative. A desktop version of the Hemingway Editor is available for Mac and PC, which is quite cheap.…

Every writer tries to write without making basic English grammar errors. However, readers are quick to notice common grammar mistakes in any form of writing. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a blog post, an article, a novel, or even a social media post. You want to make sure people understand, appreciate, and enjoy your…

The most flexible and versatile punctuation mark—the Em Dash There are many ways to use dashes in writing. But it is necessary first to tell the difference between a hyphen, an em dash, and an en dash. En and em dashes are longer than the hyphen. An em dash often indicates a break in thought…

How do you check your writing for sentence fragments and run-on sentence errors? Finding a solution is simple once you can recognize the problem with a sentence. When you write in a hurry, you will always need to make a few corrections. It’s easy to make small grammar and spelling mistakes or use misused words.…

You are probably asking, what is a dangling modifier? Of all the grammatical terms, this one is my favorite. It is just plain funny. Dangling conjures up the vision of someone hanging from a tall building by a long rope tied around one ankle and swinging uneasily from side to side. But in a grammatical sense,…

The schwa is the mid-central vowel sound and the most common vowel sound in English. It occurs in many words, unstressed syllables, or to contract auxiliary verbs and prepositions. The schwa sounds like “uh” in umbrella or under, and in phonetics, it is represented by the schwa symbol of an upside-down /ə/. If you look up a word in an English dictionary,…