Category: Grammar Repair Shop

Acronyms and abbreviations are a great way to tighten up your writing and save yourself some keystrokes, but they’re only clear to insiders who use them on a regular basis. Good writers are careful to follow these rules for using acronyms and abbreviations.

Microsoft Word’s grammar check alerts you when you repeat a word, but is repeating a word always wrong? Bonnie Trenga, author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier, says no. Here are several examples to illustrate when it’s perfectly fine to repeat a word.

Semicolons are often misused, inspiring both love and hate from professional wordsmiths. But with a proper understanding of their purpose, they can be­­come one of your favorite punctuation marks.

The Associated Press Style­­book has given its blessing to using the adverb hopefully, meaning “it is hoped.”“This may not seem like a big deal, but to many linguistic sticklers it is the end of the world of correctness,” Lynn Gaertner-Johnston noted.

What’s the rule on these four sentence-starting and -stopping strategies? 1. Starting a sentence with “and” or “but.” 2. Launching a sentence with “There is” or “There are.” 3. Ending a sentence with a preposition. 4. Starting a sentence with “how­­ever.”

Are you “smothering” perfectly good verbs? Example: You turn “decide” into a noun, making it “decision.” Then you need to use “decision” as a verb, so you write, “make a decision”—forgetting that you could simply use “decide.”

While these phrases aren’t grammatically incorrect, they tend to be used in all the wrong places: “With all due respect, …” “Does that make sense?” … “I hear what you’re saying, but …”

An admin reader recently wrote, “My goodness, will you please do a piece that tells people the difference between ‘intra’ and ‘inter’? While you’re at it, ‘effect’ vs. ‘affect’ wouldn’t hurt, either.”