Posts Categorized: Old Triangle Grammar Guide

Sometimes, a simple fix can make the difference between a reader finishing a story and giving up in befuddlement. I… Read more »

Here is a new Grammar Guide quiz. This one is a hodgepodge of issues of grammar and usage.

Welcome to the continuation of the Grammar Guide blog in a new place! I have been writing about language since… Read more »

This is my final post on the Triangle Grammar Guide. I was among the copy editors and designers at The… Read more »

The crawl editor/writer on MSNBC this morning needed to double-check the use of “lay” and “lie.”

I was on an urban light rail train recently in Charlotte, N.C., and noticed this message on the scrolling LED… Read more »

I have had the word dilemma on my mind for the past week. The word comes up fairly often in… Read more »

A new Grammar Guide quiz is up. Here is the disclaimer for all you sticklers: No, it's not really about… Read more »

I made this edit one night last week: The company adopted new accounting standards after the acquisition that significantly impacted… Read more »

Here is a new Grammar Guide quiz. Almost all of the 10 sentences involve word usage challenges. I have one… Read more »

The latest Grammar Guide quiz involves pronouns. Some explanations in this quiz include grammatical terms such as "nominative case" and… Read more »

Columnist Barry Saunders finds fault with the word ginormous and wishes editors would not allow such coinages into the pages… Read more »

The latest Grammar Guide quiz involves commonly confused words — as you might have guessed, one of my favorite copy… Read more »

I saw this feature in the March issue of Reader's Digest: Eight expressions that ought to exist in our native… Read more »

A story in The News & Observer's Sunday edition might be interesting to language buffs and fans of regional accents…. Read more »

A reader asks this interesting question: Two items in the news yesterday made me wonder, and I hope you have… Read more »

I've run across two sentences recently that confused affect and effect in a similar way: While the university doesn’t yet… Read more »

This sentence from a blog post illustrates a pair of commonly confused words. Read the sentence and see whether you… Read more »

This sentence from a TV Squad question-and-answer with the author of a book about "American Idol" made me cringe and… Read more »

A wonderful headline ("Sit. Stay. Parse. Good girl!") attracted me to this New York Times story about a border collie… Read more »

A friend's Facebook status update reminded me that I wanted to write about the honorific ma'am. Some women don't like… Read more »

I found a quiz that I wrote a while ago but apparently hadn't posted. All five sentences deal with making… Read more »

I have used the word awesome a few times lately to describe something that I found terrific or impressive. This… Read more »

Two colleagues came to me with a question: Is it incorrect to begin a sentence with and or but? I… Read more »

The latest Grammar Guide quiz has more parts than usual. I have 11 sentences that offer you a choice of… Read more »