by Tom Corson-Knowles |
Placing commas correctly in sentences is tricky for most writers, as we don’t want our sentences to be very long with no pauses for our readers to take. But when we learn when and where to place commas, especially when using commas with conjunctions like but,...
by Tom Corson-Knowles
The English language contains more than 500,000 words, many of them borrowed from other languages. Its closest competitor in the language sweepstakes is German, with just under 200,000 words. Because of these verbal riches, English is more semantically complex than...
by Tom Corson-Knowles
Writers have used shortcuts and abbreviations for centuries. That’s not surprising, especially when you consider the manual effort involved in putting stylus, quill, brush, or pen to tablet, papyrus, vellum, silk, or paper. Several Latin abbreviations have...
by Tom Corson-Knowles
What is the Oxford comma? The Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is the final comma you write when listing three or more items in a row. You can and should use an Oxford comma with any list of at least three nouns, verbs, or phrases. For example: I ate...
by Tom Corson-Knowles |
The meaning of the term “weasel words” has nothing to do with the tendency of weasels to crawl about unnoticed and insinuate themselves into the sentences of innocent politicians; it has to do with a rather picturesque analogy for telling lies. ~ John...
by Tom Corson-Knowles
Latin was once the language of scholars and academics in the Western world. Although this is no longer the case, many terms that have been used for centuries remain staples of modern speech. The crime was hidden by sealed records and sub rosa operations. Once I...
