by Pat Iyer | May 1, 2019 | Blog, Grammar, Writing Skills
A comma may be a little squiggle, but it does a lot for your writing. It adds meaning, clarity, elegance, and, in some cases, beauty to your writing. Its absence can bore or confuse the reader. Comma usage is loaded with rules, and it’s a good idea to study them....
by Pat Iyer | Apr 24, 2019 | Blog, Writing Skills
Maybe. Are you confusing singular and plural forms in the same sentence? And is this really wrong? Grammar rarely enters the world of culture and politics. Pronouns are a notable exception to this generality. Prior to the 1970s, the default pronoun was “he.” “If a...
by Pat Iyer | Apr 5, 2019 | Blog, Writing Skills
Also known as incomplete sentences, fragments are generally frowned on in the English language. Exceptions exist, and I’ll get to them later. Defining sentence fragments First, let’s define a sentence fragment. It’s a sentence...
by Pat Iyer | Mar 13, 2019 | Blog, Video, Writing Skills
In an age of texting and emoticons, it is easy to make writing mistakes. When communication can be as brief as “?,” grammar may seem like something that only old and uptight people find necessary. (Like me.) At some point this may become true, but we’re not there yet....
by Pat Iyer | Jan 26, 2019 | Blog, Grammar, Video, Writing Skills
Avoid these top 3 grammatical mistakes if you want to present yourself as a skilled writer. Use of the apostrophe Last week I was setting up books on a table for a book sale. One of the books I came across was called “Cave of the Bat’s”. I was horrified, not by the...
by Pat Iyer | Dec 21, 2018 | Blog, Writing Skills
You’ve heard people use filler phrases when they talk: “Um”, “Well”, “Really”, or “Like”. Are you guilty of using filler phrases in your writing? I heard about a writer who set the goal of removing one unnecessary...
