by Liz Bureman |
Let’s say that you and your friends are watching a spy film. The hero is in restraints and staring down the business end of a laser gun that is threatening to fry off his face. The plucky sidekick is trapped in the middle of a nearby lake, and the spy headquarters has no idea that the hero is even in Abu Dhabi because he was supposed to be in Bucharest, but got sidetracked by a lady. It sure looks like the end for our hero. All of a sudden, a bright light beams down onto our hero, and he disappears, only to rematerialize on Mars. A man in white walks up to him, and says, “Welcome to the space headquarters of the Alliance’s spy network.”
Wait a minute. No one mentioned anything about the Alliance having a space headquarters. The entirety of this plot has been about kidnapping a biological engineer. There hasn’t been any mention of anything outside the Earth’s atmosphere in any context whatsoever. What just happened?
You’ve been blindsided by a deus ex machina
by Liz Bureman |
I was planning on continuing our adventurous foray into the modern use of Latin, but then one of my coworkers sent me this screengrab from her Facebook news feed, and I immediately knew I had to share this with all of you.
Who can pick out the mistake here? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the semicolon. That’s actually being used properly.
by Liz Bureman |
We’ve covered a lot of the minutiae of grammar on the Write Practice, but today we’re taking it back to the basics and running through some of the most fundamental parts of speech.
What is a part of speech? A part of speech is a category of words that serve the same basic function in a sentence, and today, we’re covering the most basic of the basics: subjects and predicates.
by Liz Bureman |
The Olympics start on Friday. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am excited beyond reason. I’m especially excited about the Olympic speedwalking. Yes, it’s a real event, and you need to Youtube it immediately. You can thank me later. I don’t think there’s really a way that I could’ve expressed my enthusiasm adequately.
And yes, could’ve is an acceptable contraction. What is not acceptable is saying “could of” instead, because that is just plain wrong.
by Liz Bureman |
So we now all know when to use “afterward” and “afterwards” thanks to last week’s -ward/-wards post, right? Good, because there’s another usage bomb about to drop. Occasionally, we confuse “afterward” and “afterword” as well. One is a noun. The other is an adverb. The meanings are not the same.
