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A colloquialsm is an informal word or phrase which is used instead of a more appropriate or formal one. Some examples are below: Informal: Pros and cons Formal: Advantages and disadvantages Informal: You’re skating on thin ice (something I admit to saying to my daughters!) Formal: You’re taking a risk There is a great website called ‘About.com: English as a Second Language’: http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bl_pairphrases1.htm. … Continue reading
Writing is like exercising – you have to warm up first. ‘Just write something’ is usually the advice given by the experts when you have writer’s block or are struggling to produce something good enough. Today, I read an interesting article called ‘Go with the Flow’ by Helen Yendall (Writing Magazine, October 2011). In her article she suggests that flow writing, also … Continue reading
Onym means ‘word’ or ‘name’ and comes from the Greek word onumon (as cited in the Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus). There are also many words formed from using ‘-onym’ as a suffix. Words with this ending, refer to special kinds of words or names e.g. antonym and synonym (also see note 69: http://wp.me/p1x6Ui-ci). Other … Continue reading
Rules for using fractions and percentages in a sentence The basic rule is – don’t mix them up in the same sentence. Example: 25% of my work colleagues have children, but only one out of every three of them have more than one child. Better: 25% of my work colleagues have children, but only 33% … Continue reading
It’s a common error to use distinct instead of distinctive and vice versa. According to The Pocket Writer’s Handbook by Martin Manser & Stephen Curtis, distinct means “‘clear’, ‘clearly noticeable’ or ‘separate and different’”; however, distinctive means that something has its own “special and unmistakable character”. Consider the following sentences: There is a distinct noise coming from … Continue reading
There are many adjectives with hyphens such as left-handed and well-mannered; however, in some instances you don’t need a hyphen. The Pocket Writer’s Handbook by Martin Manser & Stephen Curtis suggests using a hyphen if the adjective comes before a noun e.g. a left-handed child and a well-kept house. If, however, the adjective follows a … Continue reading
It’s quite common to mistakenly use the word may instead of the word might and vice versa. Collins Improve your Writing Skills by Graham King explains that you should use the word may in present and future tense situations “when an outcome is still unknown”, whereas you would use might “when an if is lurking in the background – when … Continue reading
I heard this word today and had to look it up, so it has become the subject of today’s blog. The Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus defines eponymous as: “(of a person) being the person after whom a literary work, film, etc., is named: the eponymous hero in the film of Jane Eyre.” “(of a literary … Continue reading
Although I’ve blogged about prepositions and conjunctions before, this blog is to clear up any confusions between the two. Preposition: the Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus defines preposition as a “word marking relation between noun or pronoun and other words”. Bernard C Lamb in The Queen’s English explains that prepositions “usually occur before the noun or pronoun … Continue reading
Words have two classes: content words and structure words. Content words Content words are the core words which give meaning to the sentence. They are the ones that we stress the most when we speak our sentences out loud. They can be nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, according to the Oxford A-Z of Grammar and Punctuation by John … Continue reading
My Writing Notebook 