My Blog
All Blog Posts by Date
Below is a list of all my blog posts. I hope you enjoy them.
Belts Really Work!
I bought something today that I never buy. A belt. I had always considered belts to be largely ornamental, and since I almost always have my shirt untucked when I’m wearing jeans so the belt loops don’t show, it seemed unnecessary. But I just bought three new pairs of jeans, and they fit fine in the dressing room.
Not With a Bang, But a Crash
That’s how my weekend started. Literally. I was at my desk when I heard two very loud thumps outside my kitchen, followed by a resounding crash. The first thing I did was scream. It scared the heck out of me!
Revert Back
It can’t be done. This is in the same category as continue on: It’s redundant. You can only revert back. You can’t revert in any other direction because revert means return to, as in a previous state, condition, practice, whatever. So, if you revert back, you go back back to a whatever. If you revert forward, well, let me know how you managed that.
In Appreciation of Maya Angelou
I publish a monthly newsletter for In Other Words…, my editing, writing, and talk radio company. In June, my main article was an homage to Ms. Maya Angelou, who had died just a few days before, on May 28th. I’m not going to reproduce the whole article here, I’m just going to give you this one section.
Apostrophes and Numbers
In elementary school, I was taught that to make a number plural, you use ‘s, not just s. So, if you talk about a particular decade, for instance, you would call them the 80’s. This rule also applied if, say, you wanted to talk about the Four W’s. (It’s a journalism term.)
Your vs You’re
These terms are not interchangeable. People often use them that way, but they’re not. One is a possessive pronoun, the other is a contraction of a pronoun and a verb. You don’t need to know that, just remember what an apostrophe is for.
It’s vs Its
This is a tricky one. Sometimes the correct usage contradicts the rules of grammar. (Doncha just love the English language.) The rule is that possessives get an apostrophe before the s. Charlie’s hat… Your cat’s collar… The article’s tone… There is one word that rule does not hold true for, and it is – you guessed it – it. The only time the s in its gets an apostrophe is when it is a contraction of it is. “It’s time to go… It’s a good idea… It’s true that…
