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Monthly Archives: January 2012
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Posted in Writing
Tagged contest, funny, ghim, inappropriate, irish, offensive, spaghettios, stereotypes, the nation
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Stay ahead of the curve, but curb your enthusiasm (and your dog)
“Do I want to use curb or curve?” Do you ever find yourself asking this question? It’s a sad fact that this problem is on many lists of “most common errors.” It shouldn’t be, but it’s true.
Posted in Words
Tagged common error, curb, curve, eggcorn, kerb, misspellings, puns, spelling
2 Comments
Stealth Mountain: sneak a “peak” at the power of twitter.
The world of language is an interesting place, full of twists and turns, ins and outs, peaks and valleys… The world of twitter is another interesting place, and when the two collide, things can get more interesting still.
Posted in Grammar, Words
Tagged bot, bots, could care less, couldn't care less, enormity, enormousness, funny, grammar, grammar and usage, grammer_man, misspellings, sleight of hand, slight of hand, sneak peak, sneak peek, stealth mountain, twitter, twitterbo, usage
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Faux professional wallcoverings? Which is faux – the professional or the covering?
There’s a tradesman’s van that I pass in my neighborhood many mornings. On the side are painted these words: Custom Interior Painting and Faux Professional Wallcoverings Faux professional wallcoverings? From the moment I first saw this it nagged at me. … Continue reading
Posted in Words
Tagged adjective, faux, faux finish, graining, jargon, marbleizing, marmorino, new, noun, skunked term, technique, treatment, trompe l'oeil, usage, wallcoverings
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A Brace of Brackets [ ]
Brackets, brackets, who’s got the brackets? Today’s post focuses on a more strict question of editing style than usual. It deals with the use of brackets [ ] , sometimes also known as square brackets in American English.
Posted in Punctuation, Things you should know
Tagged AP style, braces, bracket, brackets, bryan garner, chicago, copyediting, curly braces, curly brackets, editing, emerson, funny, parentheses, parenthesis, quotations, square brackets, style, w.c. fields
3 Comments
