What do you have to “loose”?
This is a usage Glitch that echoes down the generations no matter how many times it is corrected. While surfing through the responses on a Linked In discussion about the virtues of self publishing, I...
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Customer Service response drowns in Usage Glitches!
Yesterday's email contained a response from the customer service department of a national health insurance company. I appreciated the quick and courteous response, but I was appalled at the poor...
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AP headline grammar does not “add” up.
Here is a headline that appeared in an online list of headlines this week. It also appeared this way at the top of the actual story: Whoops! The word AD is short for advertisement. It is a noun, not...
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Three errors in one sentence. Too many?
As newspapers evolve in these fast-changing times, it appears to me that they are placing less and less emphasis on careful copyediting. Frequent errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage not...
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CAPITOL or CAPITAL? Easy tip for choosing correctly.
Driving back up I-65 from beautiful Gulf Shores on Monday, I spotted a billboard that read simply, "85 Years of Bringing Capital to the Capitol." We passed by so quickly I didn't see whose ad it was,...
View ArticlePRINCIPLE or PRINCIPAL? An Easy Tip for Remembering Which is Which.
Because both PRINCIPLE and PRINCIPAL are legitimate words, a spell checker will not pinpoint your error if you use the wrong one. The good news is that, like CAPITOL and CAPITAL, there is any easy way...
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To use or not to use? (A grammar checker, that is.)
I use Grammarly's free grammar checker because I don't want to misplace a comma and end up eating Gramma (as in "Let's eat Gramma!" instead of "Let's eat, Gramma!"). When I teach business writing...
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“…the annuls of war.” Those would be great to have!
A letter to the editor in The Birmingham News last week included an odd, unintended perspective on war. The writer wanted to compare the current Israel/Palestine conflict to issues in the Korean War...
View ArticleReporter locates apostrophe correctly, then forgets the rule before the end...
One short article about taxes and sewage contains two Glitches. Here is the first Glitch, which is puzzling because the reporter uses the apostrophe correctly in the first part of the sentence but...
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“Pokemon Go” Articles Need Copy Editor
The Birmingham News must have been in a hurry to rush its Pokemon stories to press on Wednesday. Their copy on Page A2 is full of errors. The first Glitch is in a headline: "Games digital popularity...
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