How putting adjectives in a certain order can help improve your writing — When I posted online last month about my post All About Adjectives: Part II (Denver Edition), a friend mentioned a news story she’d recently heard about the order of adjectives, something she hadn’t known existed. I wasn’t taught about the order of adjectives in school, either, but find the subject…

And how to use sequence of tenses correctly in your writing — In my first post in this two-part series, I discussed the different types of verb tenses and their “moods.” Now let’s look at a special issue related to verb tenses, “sequence of tenses,” or how verbs (or verb phrases) in clauses agree. …

And how to use verb tenses correctly in your writing — When I lived in Nashville another lifetime ago, a fellow coworker/word nerd was surprised to learn I was unfamiliar with the pluperfect tense. Turned out I was unfamiliar with many of the official (and alternative) names for verb tenses; I’d simply figured out how verb tenses worked and managed to…

More types of adjectives and how to use them correctly in your writing — In Part I of this series, I noted that various types of adjectives exist — and that some serve up special challenges for writers. …

Different types of adjectives and how to use them correctly in your writing — Adjectives are pretty easily understood as words that describe nouns (as opposed to adverbs, which describe verbs). In the following sentence, “international” is an adjective that modifies the noun “airport”: “The international airport in Syracuse, New York, is located near the suburb of North Syracuse, where I grew up.” Simple…

Including even more esoteric reasons to use a singular or plural verb in certain situations — In Part I of this three-part series on subject-verb agreement, I delve into some basics of how a singular subject takes a singular verb, a plural subject takes a plural verb, and two or more subjects take a plural verb. …

And what revelations from the Penguin Random House antitrust case mean for writers — Please note that clicking on some links in this post and making a purchase may result in me earning a small amount of cashola. Thanks. In “Why Every Writer Needs to Care About This Current Court Case,” Melissa Gouty provides a great look at the Penguin Random House antitrust case…

Including some slightly esoteric reasons to use a singular or plural verb in certain situations — In Part I of this three-part series on subject-verb agreement, I delve into some basics of how a singular subject takes a singular verb, a plural subject takes a plural verb, and two or more subjects take a plural verb. …

Including when to use a singular or plural verb in certain situations — Like many issues related to grammar, subject-verb agreement begins with a simple rule and then broadens to cover numerous exceptions. …