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What a Difference a Dictionary Makes
Noah Webster Today is D Day. Excuse me, not that D Day, which was June 6, not October 16. And that year was 1944, when military forces of...
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Jul 9, 20194 min read
A Lesson in Less
Before I launch into a dyspeptic treatment of a particular phenomenon I’ve observed in the mechanics of writing, let me thank the...
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Sep 18, 20184 min read
Spare the Hyphen and Spoil the Phrase
It’s been a long time since The Grammar Grouch has groaned and moaned, and he’s getting testy. Time for him to purge those damned,...
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Jun 17, 20183 min read
The Biggest Grammar Goof
Fred Barbash At the risk of sounding obsessive, I must once again bring up an egregious grammatical error that is popping up with ever...
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May 7, 20183 min read
Just Between You and Me …
The English language, in the United States at least, is in free fall. Everywhere – in newspapers, periodicals, online stock market...
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Jan 12, 20183 min read
Wayward Words
“Words matter” is a buzz phrase tossed around frequently these days, and remarks yesterday by our clueless, callous, boorish and...
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Oct 20, 20173 min read
Levying the syntax
The Grammar Grouch has been so busy lately venting his spleen on our sorry excuse for a president and a GOP Congress afraid to counter...
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Sep 4, 20172 min read
Adverbial Conundrum
Before my novel Murder in Palm Beach: The Homicide That Never Died was published, the outside editor for the publisher evaluated my work...
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Jul 12, 20172 min read
Books, Etcetera
An ancillary benefit from doing book signings is the opportunity to meet the most interesting people. I’ve been signing my novel Murder...
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Mar 7, 20172 min read
It’s elementary, my dear Watson.
The Grammar Grouch is more dyspeptic than usual today. The thing which has him in high dudgeon is that totally, woefully, abysmally wrong...
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Feb 11, 20173 min read
The English Connection
Have I become a more astute writer in the past decade or so, or has the writing community become more sloppy? Did I in decades past make...
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May 23, 20162 min read
Well, I’ll be dashed!
I have been remiss, and my file of miscues in the mechanics of writing has grown thick. Newspapers, magazines, business communications –...
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Mar 21, 20162 min read
Alas, poor Your. Ick.
The best evidence of the deterioration of quality in our society is, in my view, the misuse of your. Ladies and gentlemen, your is an...
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Feb 3, 20162 min read
Pronoun Predicament
Driving down the road, listening to NPR, I heard a newscast that reminded me of the conundrum over which pronoun to use when the gender...
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Nov 17, 20152 min read
Word waste
Yogi Berra Judged by today’s linguistic milieu, Yogi Berra’s verbal foibles were not all that uncommon. The words and phrases we hear and...
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Oct 3, 20153 min read
Punctuate to Communicate
These days, I find myself running into run-on sentences with greater frequency. Seems as though people are too impatient, or lazy, or...
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Aug 17, 20153 min read
A Word to the Wise
Writing isn’t the only way to abuse the English language. The spoken word gets pummeled aplenty these days, often by persons who should...
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Aug 2, 20152 min read
The Confounded Compound Sentence
Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley In the opinion of this humble scribe, the most common writing error involves the compound sentence....
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Jul 1, 20153 min read
However: Alpha or Omega?
When I was in my upper 30s, working with the Palm Beach Post, I came across a piece written by the copy chief that had the...
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Jun 25, 20152 min read
Fitness Trainer Unfit to Write
I’m part-way through an email promotion for what the fitness trainer alleges to be the most amazing discovery about how to flatten your...
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