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Category Archives: Flair & Finesse
Making Sentence Parts Fit
Steel yourself. We’re going to revisit a fuzzy topic from English class: the “dangling modifier.” Oh, yeah. Now what was that all about? The principle – simpler than you might think – is merely that we need to correct any … Continue reading
Posted in Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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Alarm #1: The Lonely “Only”
I often emphasize a particular metaphor in my writing workshops for employee groups: that if we’re at all accomplished in any area – whether it’s writing or rappelling or retrofitting – we surely have a highly developed “alarm system” that … Continue reading
Posted in Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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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
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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 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
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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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Borrow from the Journalists
Yes, print journalism is struggling these days, but does that mean we don’t have anything to learn from our favorite newspapers and magazines? After all, the craft has been undergoing continual refinement for hundreds of years, and plenty of smart … Continue reading
Posted in Flair & Finesse
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