Your style of writing is different than other’s in that it is very consice. I wish I would of found copyblogger sooner but better late than never! At least now the information will be usefull to many writers and I.
All joking aside, I truly do enjoy your advice. It’s satisfying to get such clear information on good writing in one place
That was really a great info.Sometimes i also do the mistake of loose and lose ?? But will bot after this read ??
Nice tips. But for some blogs I have seen, even after they commit so many grammatical mistakes still they get popular in Blogverse. Is it just because of keyword placement or people are too humble to ignore the mistakes?
The Latin phrase exempli gratia means “for example”, so e.g. is used before giving specific examples that support your assertion.
I feel as if I have just finished an English class. Loose and lose are really confusing. Thanks for making it clear with a great example.
Brain, I copied and pasted number three for my future reference. Yes I try to write in my own style but I like it to make sense.
Good one Brian
3. My own pet peeve: English horseracing commentators who talk about a race being ‘plenty long enough’ or the ground being ‘plenty soft enough’ for a particular horse. This is tautology, is it not?
I have a question for your and the readers: English is not my mother-tongue but most of my audience is located in UK, North-America and Australia.
The use of over instead of more than is another common error. I was just discussing this with a friend last night regarding a blog post that contained the phrase:
Which sounds better? “Chris and me” or “Chris and I”? It doesn’t matter; the latter is acceptable while the former is not.
With the example of taking out the other person, I can say that “me went to the store” sound entirely incorrect. I am also assuming that in this case “the store” is the indirect object, as the focus of the sentence is “Chris and I”, unlike Brian’s example where the “call” is the object being given.
If anything, it shows that the error is so common, I assumed you got it wrong too, but you did indeed get it right.
If ever Generation Y write like they talk, i.e. I “go” or she “goes” instead of I “said” or she “said” I’m throwing in the hat.
Not to pat myself on the back, but I’m a registered yoga teacher. I teach people how to breathe. The recent problems I’ve seen with bloggers writing “breathe” when they mean “breath” bums me out major.
My pet gripe at the moment is when title loans Alaska people confuse “amount” and “number” such as “The amount of people who confuse these two words is increasing”. It should, of course be the number of people. My other pet hate is confusing “your” with “you’re”.
The only trick may be knowing that it doesn’t bother your readers nearly as much as it’s bugging you
One more for the list, a beginning that is becoming too common: “In addition …” We only need to begin our sentences with this phase when speaking of arithmetic, it should otherwise be avoided.
What makes my teeth grind is when I hear journalists, professors, anyone say, “Quote unquote,” and then they quote the quote outside the quotation marks.
I grew up in an English speaking country other than the USA, and was taught that the use of I at the end of a list of two or me people including yourself is the correct form. “Give Chris and I a call” sounds a helluva lot more natural to me than your corrected version, I’m afraid, and I’ll stick to that.
p.s. A “Back to Top” link at the bottom of the comments area would be most helpful to get me to the links to your other blog posts. Again, having to scroll through a lot of comments to navigate the page is time consuming and frustrating. Usually I’ll just give up and navigate to another site altogether. (Yes, I probably do have ADD or one of those acronym-conditions. lol)
With that said, I’ve read this comment four times hoping that I have not made an error. In this context, my level of embarrassment would be at least double that of an error in another post. I’m crossing my fingers as I click submit…
It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. If you put as much effort into building relationships as you do writing great content, you’ll have a popular blog in no time.
When or how is the word “ones” used/spelled in a sentence such as the following: Diet is a critical component of Bonfire’s lifestyle teaching; beyond everyday healthy choices, integral to the program is the recommendation to supplement ones diet with …”
Look carefully at the first sentence, which ends with “I”. The quote marks should end BEFORE the period and not after it especially since you are not quoting someone or from someone’s work. At first I thought it was a “typo”, but then when I read the second sentence, I realized that this was not the case. You repeat the same error.
As far as blogging, any writer should take the extra step and either have a well-versed friend review the post or use a gram. I have emailed blog authors and asked them to have their posts proofread because I believe their errors show laziness and reduce their credibility.
Excellent articleing from the UK I tend not to use ‘of’ in place of ‘could’ve, should’ve, would’ve’ but the appostrophe ‘s’ is my greatest failing so thanks for the useful tips – I hope to get this right more often now. As for Lou who posted on 12th mar right when they’re ready to – they probably don’t see why it’s important right now. I didn’t take grammar that seriously until I had to correct other peoples’ work and saw how embarrassing all those seemingly trivial mistakes were.
My appologies if I offended you but I guess that you must be that rarity in North America. If you think that I “generalised” I’m sorry but I cannot agree. Any misuse of grammar that is used on such a regular basis bus be deemed to be normal for that country. The problem is that only the English actually speak English and Americans speak, well American! Please not I only used one ! this time. ??
Thanks Brian for this outstanding post. Its inspired me especially when i thought i knew how to use English words. Keep it up
There are so many foreigners, Dutch, Norwegians, Finnish, who write 100% better than that. Frankly, most people who write ‘would of’ are in the US. They also lay a lot of eggs there, as everyone is always laying down. *grin*