October 28, 2024
You probably know that you’re supposed to capitalize proper nouns, including the names of people, places, and organizations. So it goes without saying that the name of the country France should be capitalized. But what are the rules of capitalization Read more…
October 22, 2024
I’m not the only person who has favorite and least-favorite grammatical rules, right? For example, the Oxford comma is definitely up there as one of my favorites. Unfortunately, the rule we’re talking about right now—the suspended hyphen—is one of my Read more…
October 21, 2024
It might sometimes seem like people just toss hyphens randomly into their writing. And with so many different rules and various situations when you do or don’t need a hyphen (even for the same word!), it’s very possible that some Read more…
Babysit or baby-sit? Common sense or common-sense? First aid, first-aid, or firstaid? There are three different kinds of compound words—open, closed, and hyphenated—and it can be tricky to keep them all straight! Overview: What Is a Compound Word? A compound Read more…
October 18, 2024
If we only had short, simple sentences, our writing would be super boring to read. Every sentence would be like this. There would be no variation. Books would be absolutely unbearable. We would sound like robots. Luckily, we’re not restricted Read more…
October 11, 2024
There are four different sentence structures to choose from: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. Each has a different assortment of independent and dependent clauses, and using a variety of structures makes your writing more interesting to read! Let’s start off Read more…
A clause is a combination of a subject and a predicate (e.g., she ran; I discovered; he reads). There might be more information added in, such as direct objects, adjectives, adverbs, etc. (e.g., she ran four miles quickly; I discovered Read more…
October 7, 2024
Parentheses are a great tool you can use to add extra information or commentary to your text. If you want to toss in some examples or clarifications, they’re super handy. Little jokes and sarcastic comments love to be nested inside Read more…
October 3, 2024
These two abbreviations get mixed up constantly. Most of the time, people use “i.e.” incorrectly when they mean “e.g.” But sometimes it’s the other way around. A big part of the problem is likely that both “i.e.” and “e.g.” are Read more…
Parentheses have all kinds of different functions: In academic papers, you’ll see them used for citations and maybe even in a few mathematical equations. In more casual writing, they’re used to insert extra information or relevant commentary. They’re handy if Read more…