Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

You learned in the early grades to use the article “a” before a consonant sound: a ball, a dog. You… Read more »

My son, a college student, asked a punctuation question that I thought might also be on others’ minds. Here is… Read more »

A reader noted this headline on the op-ed page on June 12: “‘Authentic’ wrong criteria for candidates.” It appears that… Read more »

A reader objected recently to a story that used “cliche” as an adjective. Here is the paragraph: But a more… Read more »

The apostrophe error in this Web page is baffling. The creator uses correct plurals for “parks” and “resorts” but makes… Read more »

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t taken Monday’s quiz yet, you might want to skip this post. I am writing about… Read more »

Today’s quiz has five sentences that illustrate common pronoun problems. Give it a try! This article was originally posted by… Read more »

Today’s quiz is about word choices. It’s the usual five-question, multiple-choice format. Give it a try here or click on… Read more »

I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the way “trespassed” is used on this sign at… Read more »

Tuesday night, I heard Chris Matthews of MSNBC correct a lawyer he was interviewing about the Lewis “Scooter” Libby verdict…. Read more »

Today’s quiz is about word choice. I find myself fixing word choice problems quite often. Sometimes, the mistake is just… Read more »

The verb shine gives some writers trouble because it has two spellings in the past tense: shined and shone. Here… Read more »

What do you call that beautiful domed building in the center of Raleigh? One of our writers called it “the… Read more »

A colleague drew my attention to this sentence from a recent story: Unlike former President John F. Kennedy, Edwards did… Read more »

If I were ever a contestant on “Jeopardy!,” you would probably never hear me say, “I’ll take ‘Foreign Words and… Read more »

Words labeled as “informal” or “colloquial” in the dictionary show up in print in our conversational age. Yesterday, I ran… Read more »

A colleague and her friend asked about whether we should use “a” or “an” with “history” and its derivatives “historic”… Read more »

A phrase at the beginning of a sentence often modifies the subject of the sentence. Sometimes writers confuse us by… Read more »

A reader asked about these two sentences: * Analyze three situations to determine what the unacceptable behavior is and what… Read more »

This headline on newsobserver.com this morning sent me to my dictionary: Defense in ‘fragging’ case asks for expert help Fragging… Read more »

Craig D. Lindsey’s review of “The Pursuit of Happyness” didn’t answer the one question I had about the movie: Why… Read more »

Sometimes we copy editors question writers’ use of foreign or slang words and phrases. That is not because we don’t… Read more »

Allusions to Shakespeare abound in newspapers. The quotes are familiar to many readers, and the Bard knew how to turn… Read more »

James Kilpatrick, in his column published in The N&O on Monday, surrenders on “everyone.” He gives up the fight against… Read more »

Oops, I forgot National Punctuation Day. Celebrate with great apostrophes every day! This article was originally posted by the Raleigh… Read more »