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How To Write It Right
And what do I have bookmarked now? DICTIONARY.COM, where I can immediately find a word’s spelling, pronunciation, and linguistic origins, no fooling around. It also has Roget’s Thesaurus if I click on “Thesaurus.” http://dictionary.reference.com/ BIG HUGE THESAURUS BIG HUGE THESAURUS does one of the few things Roget’s Thesaurus doesn’t: it gives words that rhyme and words that, as they put it, “sound alike.” If you write jingles or poetry that rhymes, you’ll love it. It also gives you ideas for blog posts and story plots. The plots are really strange, but maybe they’d start your brain cells to moving, I don’t know. Try it at GET RID OF MANAGEMENT-SPEAK The second day of my first job, my boss asked me to write a memo inviting the department heads to a management meeting at two o’clock the next day. So I wrote, “Please come to a management meeting tomorrow at two o’clock.” “No, no, NO!” I had it all wrong. The boss rewrote the invitation as a lengthy, convoluted piece of management-speak with lots and lots of nice official sounding words. I shared an office with a professional writer, and I could see him sitting over there grinning. I know now that he was grinning because my ignorant invitation was good writing; my boss’s knowledgeable invitation was poor writing in the form of management-speak. But management-speak ruled then, and in most offices it rules now. If you still want to eliminate it from your writing, come here: http://www.friedbeef.com/2007/06/09/top-10-tools-to-improve-your-writing-part-2/ TWENTY WORDS THAT MAY MAKE YOU LOOK STUPID Find here “twenty words that make you look stupid if you misuse them.” I found a pair that have bothered me for years: “Farther refers to physical distance. Further refers to an extension of time or degree.” Check them all out here:
http://www.getitinwriting.biz/blog/2007/03/ A GREAT LIST OF WORD-USAGE ERRORS BRIANS’ LIST. Scroll down a little and find a vast assemblage of potential errors, nicely alphabetized. When faced with a word-use problem, I have always turned to Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, which I have in the print version. Brians’ website may have more listings, however, and he’s extremely thorough. It’s an excellent resource. (And, since we’re being picky right now, his last name is Brians, and therefore my use of the possessive as Brians’ is correct.) http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html PUNCTUATION ERRORS Find here some of the most common punctuation errors. I also see off to the right an article with “10 Rules For Writing Numbers And Numerals,” a complex problem for writers, as different publications have different rules. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/category/punctuation/ You can also sign up here for their “daily writing tips.” http://www.dailywritingtips.com/ BRAINY QUOTES "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get." - Mark Twain "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." - Gilbert K. Chesterton "He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven." - Thomas Fuller You'll find thousands more brainy, wise, funny quotes at the site below: |
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