Thank you so much for your email – we love hearing from you!
That’s the first line from an email I received the other day. The dash in the middle of the sentence should have been a period. (Actually, it looks like a hyphen, but we’ll leave... (Read More)
No, I’m not going anywhere. I simply wanted to show you a correct use of the word until, which can always be shortened to till, but not to ’till or til, neither of which is considered correct. Type til in Word and a red squiggly mark will let you know... (Read More)
“Come for Bloody Mary’s,” read the invitation to Sunday brunch.
“I’ll be there,” I responded. But what’s with the apostrophe? (I kept that question to myself.)
To make a plural out of many proper names, including ones that that end in y, you simply add s, so Bloody... (Read More)
These two sentences came across my desk the other day. Only one is correct. Which one is it?
• In 1915, the company formally established its travel business and has built it, year by year, on the deep-seeded values of trust, security and service.
• Private commercial bankers are... (Read More)
I opened the travel section of the Sunday New York Times the other day to a full page advertisement for the state of Florida. Say yes to sun day, everyday, read the copy over a picture of two kids frolicking in a pool under sunny skies.
Problem is, it should... (Read More)
When I read copy that capitalizes lots of words, I feel as though I’m bobbing for apples, that game where you lean over a tub of water filled with floating apples and try to grasp them with your teeth. The apples bob up and down, and so does your head.... (Read More)
Someone sent me the bio of a newly appointed chief executive officer. It said he served on an executive leadership team “from 2010 – 2013.”
The problem with “from 2010 – 2013” is that it’s redundant. The dash—in this case the en dash—means from the first date up to and... (Read More)
The other day a snazzy-looking magazine from Chevrolet arrived in the mail. The automotive company clearly had spent a lot of money on it. I flipped to the first page where my eyes landed on this greeting—rendered in big, bold type: “Welcome to the Premiere Issue of New Roads.”
Problem... (Read More)
I’m continually bemused by how frequently writers mistakenly put quote marks around words and phrases—and inadvertently amused by the effect of the incorrectly quoted matter.
Here are the five cases in which it’s correct to use quotation marks. The last two seem to spark the most misuse, as you’ll see... (Read More)
“I spent a lot of time in his office, talking commas,” recalled John McPhee in an interview with the Paris Review. McPhee was describing what it was like to work with William Shawn, the illustrious former editor of The New Yorker magazine. “He explained everything with absolute patience, going through... (Read More)
