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Author Archives: Norm Friedman
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I recently came across an amusing subhead in a promotional flyer: “Learn from Incredible Speakers.” Then the piece promoting an all-day conference said, in smaller print, “Listen to expert speakers from around the country.” Ah, “expert.” Nice recovery, but, unfortunately, … Continue reading
Posted in Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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Stay on Track II
Last week we looked at how frequently bullets are not composed in a parallel fashion and how easily we can fix that oversight. To review: I hope to cover three items at Friday’s meeting: • Setting a theme for our … Continue reading
Posted in Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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Stay on Track
In last week’s post, I highlighted an unusual number of flaws in just two sentences of an online article. One of those flaws, a breakdown in parallel construction, deserves more illumination because many of us found the topic tedious back … Continue reading
Posted in Flair & Finesse
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An Embarrassment of Glitches
What a gold mine. A few days ago, a major online news outfit handed me a cornucopia of discussion topics in just two sentences: “In the past two weeks, overall arrests have fallen 66 percent compared to the same period … Continue reading
Posted in Brevity, Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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A Year-End Question
Which is correct: “New Year’s Eve” or “New Years Eve”? Do we need the apostrophe or should we leave it out? Or are they both correct? The answer is that we need it because we’re talking about the eve of … Continue reading
Posted in Common Punctuation Errors
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A Recommended “U-Turn”
A personalized license plate I spotted recently made me smile: MYWAY34. Apparently, this fellow feels pretty good about his uniquely independent spirit … and at least 33 other guys feel the same about theirs. And what does this have to … Continue reading
Posted in Flair & Finesse
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Eliminating Those Pesky “Ofs”
Like an annoying mosquito or gnat spoiling an ideal summer evening, the word “of” often mars an otherwise perfect sentence. In fact, those erroneous “ofs” are so easy to miss, they crop up frequently in books, newspapers, and magazines––and certainly … Continue reading
Posted in Brevity, Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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Putting Two School Rules in Context
If emancipation from two no-nos we had to heed in school will make your day, I’ll try. Let’s review. The fragment Back in fifth or seventh grade––and maybe high school––we weren’t allowed to write sentence fragments because our teachers needed … Continue reading
Posted in Flair & Finesse, Tone
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Quotation Marks: Inside or Outside? Part II
In the last post I tried to reinforce an absolute rule for “American English”: The two most common punctuation marks, periods and commas, ALWAYS GO INSIDE quotation marks, despite our logic telling us otherwise. (“American English” because the rule is different in … Continue reading
Posted in Common Punctuation Errors
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Quotation Marks: Inside or Outside? (Part I)
For a short workweek, let’s clear up an area of punctuation confusion we can cover in a short post––but there’s a catch. This punctuation rule can be counterintuitive. But wait. If you can sweep away the counterintuitive part, you’ll never … Continue reading
Posted in Common Punctuation Errors
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