-
Join 286 other subscribers
Search TheBetterEditor Blog:
-
Recent Posts
- Do you write “like a girl?” August 30, 2021
- Should You Spell Out Numbers In Legal Documents? July 30, 2021
- Mentor, mentee — how about mentoree? June 29, 2021
- On Behalf of Jamais Vu May 30, 2021
- Shibboleth — not someone who predicts the future and not a Lovecraft monster April 28, 2021
Search the archive
Categories
- Culture (74)
- Dear Internets (4)
- Film or Book Review (9)
- Grammar (20)
- Language (98)
- Punctuation (9)
- Requested (10)
- Superstition (4)
- Things you should know (112)
- Uncategorized (10)
- Words (155)
- Writing (53)
Category Archives: Superstition
Bucholz Brilliance
This past week I was busy reading student essays and finishing off grades for the spring term. With Mother’s Day and several personal events getting in the way, none of the many in-progress posts for this blog were finished to … Continue reading
Posted in Superstition
Tagged audience, bucholz, cracked.com, descriptivist, grammar, grammar and usage, graphic, literal, seanbaby, skunked term, strunk & white
Leave a comment
My Prescription for Description
Or maybe I should title this “My Description of Prescription.” It depends on which side you come at the issue from. Are you a descriptivist or a prescriptivist?
Posted in Grammar, Superstition, Things you should know
Tagged assert, assertionist, assertive, comics, describe, description, descriptive, descriptivist, language log, prescribe, prescription, prescriptive, prescriptivist, rules, safire, teaching, tolerance, usage, volo
1 Comment
Can you write a one-sentence paragraph?
Oh, my friends, why must this question even be raised? Of the grammar and usage superstitions that I have students look into (and on which I poll them each semester), this is one that they have consistently been taught by … Continue reading
Posted in Superstition
Tagged journalism, one-sentence paragraph, paragraph, pernicious, single-sentence paragraph, style, usage
9 Comments
And, But, Because: And can start a sentence. But don’t overdo it. Because it isn’t always pretty.
Can you use and, but, or because at the start of a sentence? Of course you can. Should you? That’s a separate matter, which I’m not even going to touch. Writers in English (not to mention speakers of it) have … Continue reading
Posted in Grammar, Superstition, Words
Tagged and, and but because, because, bryan garner, but, conjunction, coordinating conjunction, diana hacker, fragment, grammar, grammar and usage, grammar girl, hacker and sommers, hypercorrection, irony, style, transitions, usage, volokh
5 Comments
thebettereditor 