Breaking the Second Rule of Tech Writing
(The first rule is to be clear.) Last speech, on the TV:
The second rule is to be concise. That means no more words than necessary. (But all the words that are necessary.) I remember, as a kid, watching a conversation in a movie about Joel Chandler Harris. Joel is told by his mentor that “if you can take out a word and not change the meaning, take it out.”
“Day” is a lot more concise than “24-hour time period.” duh
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A List of Homophones
Homophones are two (or more) words that have different meanings and different spellings, but the same pronounciation. The cartoonist did a nice job of mentioning several three-way homophones!
False Plurals
Treat false plurals like the singulars they are. These words just happen to end in ‘s.’ Here’s a guy (Mike Peterson) who probably actually knows better getting it wrong. “Economics” is a singular. It gets a singular verb. Unfortunately, we’ve got a significant number of people here who are just as ignorant about how economics […]
A Grammar Post about Posessives
Okay, I don’t do politics, so ignore that. Here’s the headline: Harris’ or Harris’s? Apostrophe row divides grammar nerds And here’s a link to the article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/14/kamala-harris-or-harriss-apostrophe-row-grammar-nerds Oh—I belong to the camp that doesn’t add the extra ‘s’ if the word already ends with an ‘s.’ Want a picture? Here it is:
One of My Favorite Wrong Words
First the comic. Last panel: Nauseous means “causing nausea.” She means nauseated, which means “feel like throwing up.”
