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Grammar
Posted by: Rob Ashton
26 / 02 / 10
When is it right to use may and when to use might? Opinions vary, depending on what you read. Here are a few guidelines culled from the Economist Style Guide and the Oxford Guide to English Usage. 1. If the truth of the event is unknown, then may or might are interchangeable. • I may/might […]
Posted by: Catie Holdridge
28 / 01 / 10
Almost a month into the first year of the new decade and the time may have come to pick a side: is it ‘twenty-ten’ or ‘two thousand and ten’? Most people seem to be automatically going with the latter, but they are wrong to do so, claims one American group. This is NAGG (the National […]
11 / 01 / 10
We’re often being asked about when to use capital letters. Why is it so confusing? The answer lies somewhere between what we’re used to seeing (beginning, as ever, with our school habits) and the seeming inconsistencies of best practice. As a general rule, capitals are for specific and formal; lower-case for unspecific and informal. Capital […]
10 / 12 / 09
So, those emoticon smiles: what else can they be used for? Round brackets Imagine the contents of round brackets (or parentheses) as an aside that might be said behind your hand (an actor on a stage might anyway). These punctuation marks come in handy to: include optional information You don’t have much time left to […]
09 / 12 / 09
Write Now reader Simon Lewis joins the great ‘that’ debate: Definitely one of my bugbears, that. Take this example: “The teaching medical students receive also leaves them with an incomplete picture.” I started interpreting this as “The medical students who teach…” — and then obviously realised [that] it was supposed to be interpreted “The teaching […]
30 / 11 / 09
The most innocuous-seeming topics have sparked incredibly heated debates. Marmite: love it or loathe it? Toilet roll facing front or facing back? [Front obviously – Ed.] Daddy or chips? Well, we’re about to start another one: whether or not to cut ‘that’ from sentences. Now, don’t panic. This is not some kind of totalitarian coup […]
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