Search results for “p”

Each writer's art is the formation of voice and technique over time. The more we write, the more we find and reveal thoughts and words connected only as we might convey them. The more we study and apply the principles for shaping good writing, the more eloquent and precise we can become. Writing differs from …

English includes words that look and sound like verbs but are not serving a sentence as such. You likely hear them often: You said you like skydiving? What about cliff jumping? The door was closed, so I couldn't hear them—their voices were muffled. Alexander said their plan is to escape. Each underlined word is an …

English includes many words with sounds and spellings so similar they become easy to confuse. Impatient and inpatient are one such pair. If you've ever found yourself tripping between impatient and inpatient, you're in the right place. We'll explain what each word means and help ensure you can distinguish the two from now on. The …

Can you form the plural of the word basis without scratching your head and turning to Google? Many Americans, including native speakers, may sometimes find themselves wondering about how to refer to more than one basis. In this brief review, we'll establish the correct way to write the plural of basis, as well as how …

Premise and premises are similarly spelled and, in the midst of writing or speech, can be interchanged in ways that let them weave in and out of our writing and speech with the glide of a professional skier. Can you separate one from the other? If not, you'll gain insight here as we distinguish premise …

We often use language techniques and functions in our writing and speech with such familiarity that we might not even know what they are nor what we're applying. As one more-recognizable example, when we merge will with not to form won't, we are contracting the words. Another operation we use with instinct but perhaps not …

We are familiar with numbers and the function they serve: We use and look at them just about every day. Recognizable enough in our checkbooks and calculators, numbers also have their own categories in writing. For example, the following sentences contain both ordinal and cardinal numbers: 1. Donetta took first place in the spelling bee. …

We all want more money, but having lots of it stuffed into one sentence can become a grammatical issue. A common question we receive concerns how to treat the plural of money. In this review, we'll get to the bottom of how to treat money when we're referring to more than a single bill in …

Michael plays basketball. Jeremiah doesn't trust pirate radio stations. Hailey dances in a ballet company. You likely recognize these statements as simple, declarative sentences that include basic components of grammar—namely a singular subject and a verb that agrees. When the subject position has two or more nouns or pronouns joined by a coordinating conjunction, we …

Imagine you are driving down the road in your car. Picture the signs, lights, and symbols you see on the way to help you know where to go at which speed, as well as when to stop and go. Now envision what your route would be like if those indicators were absent or misplaced. Punctuation …