Category: Blog

This struck me as a good illustration of having different points of view about the same topic. Not a lot else to say.
—Except to point out that the English teacher gets “whom” correct.

How do you feel about rainbows?

I have several times criticized misuse of the expression “beg the question” (look it up), so I like it when someone gets it right:

But this raises the question: why do EV cars need different tires, if conventional tires have already evolved to virtual perfection? The answer lies in weight difference. EVs are heavier than conventional cars, and the greater the weight, the more rapidly tires wear down. 

https://interestingengineering.com/goodyear-just-followed-michelin-in-launching-new-specialized-ev-tires

(I quoted the two sentences after it in case you were curious about the answer to the question itself.)

Remember: “begging the question” is making the fallacy of offering what you want to prove as evidence for its proof.

Okay, I like pictures. Here’s one from the article:

Putting “only” too early in the sentence is one of my hobbyhorses. Put the word right in front of what it refers to. Like this guy. You can skip to the last panel.

Yay! He didn’t put “only” in front of “means.”

Some abbreviations don’t have periods, such as “NASA.” And we pronounce it like a word. But some abbreviations are easily misunderstood without periods. For example, the abbreviation for “United States.” Without the periods, the U.S. might be treated as a pronoun. See below:

When I first saw this, I considered making it into a lesson about “we” and “us.” Then I read the whole sentence. Saying “U.S. diplomats” would have removed the ambiguity, wouldn’t it?

Periodize your abbreviations when you need to remove ambiguity!

A pleonasm is when you have one or more unnecessary words in a sentence. Here’s an example:

Obviously you don’t need both “still” and “yet.” But what about “shoot”?

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but spelled and defined differently. Here are a bunch of examples.

These can be a source of trouble for ESL folks.

You see both solecisms, right?

I don’t need to point out the misspelling and the misplaced comma, do I?

Mr. Fitz is an English teacher, so I like the strip a lot.

I definitely try to avoid linking verbs in my writing…

First panel. What are the hens doing? Laying or lying?

The hen says “lay.” But is she referring to laying eggs or being passive and lying in their nests? Maybe the author is wrong; maybe he’s presenting the hen as somewhat illiterate.

Don’t you be illiterate!

The word is “located.”

For example:

Some of the best shopping in Idaho isn’t found at big, chain stores. Rather, it is found in the small, local shops that seem to be a bit out of the way. That is certainly the case with The Gathering Place, a small Amish Store located in Bonners Ferry in northern Idaho.

Here it is again in the next paragraph:

The Gathering Place is actually a combination of three separate stores: The Bread Basket, Sharon’s Country Store, and the 3-Mile Produce Stand. These stores are all run by the same owners and located under one roof.

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/idaho/the-gathering-place-amish-store-id

Delete the words in bold. Does the meaning of the sentence change? If not, delete them.

You can use the word as a transitive verb: “See whether you can locate Bonners Ferry on a map.”

Here’s a picture of the place. Might be worth the trip.

If you can locate Bonners Ferry on a map…