Clifford & Co
“The cat sat on the mat” is a simple declarative sentence. Six words of one syllable. It’s not very impressive, is it? If you write stuff like that, your readers aren’t going to say, “What an impressive writer.” So let’s see how we might jazz it up and maybe unearth some techniques that will help us sound clever.
Greek scholars invented the hyphen in about the second century BC. Two thousand years later, we’re still struggling to get it right.
In my experience, proofreading is often misunderstood. It’s perceived by some as a magical process by which an un-fact-checked, poorly structured first draft can be transformed into a literary masterpiece in a couple of hours.
What’s the world’s number one language? It’s not English – at least, not if you count only native speakers. By that definition, English is third in the league table. Mandarin is first, by a long way. Then Spanish. And then English, then Hindi.
But it’s a different picture when you count those who use English as a second language.
I wrote an article about grammar pedantry a little while ago and a gentleman among the commenters took me to task for starting my sentences with conjunctions. And I think he may have meant it seriously. But maybe he was joking.
Some people have strong views on what grammar rules you must abide by. Others say it doesn’t matter as long as you make yourself understood. For my part, I like things to be correct and clear; and I think we do well to agree to observe some rules or conventions. But there are some ‘rules’ that exist for, frankly, no good reason…