One Place Where Everyone Gets “lie/lay” correct
I hope I don’t need to tell you that “Here lies” is the correct form.
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Tech Writers Have a Rule About This
First, the comic:
The rule is this:
Then someone adds, “But some people are idiots.”
Another Mondegreen
A mondegreen is when you misinterpret the words to a song. I’m not much on pop culture, so I’ve never heard of Chris Isaak, but you should still get the joke.
So do you have a favorite mondegreen? Put it in the comments. BTW, look up “mondegreen” in the search box for some other posts on this subject, including the reason we call it a mondegreen.
When to use an apostrophe to make a plural
Part of good writing is to be unambiguous. Sometimes you need an apostrophe to make a plural sound right. See the last word in this comic:
The apostrophe makes you pronounce it “prose” which is plural of “pro.” Without the apostrophe, it’s “pros,” which you might be inclined to pronounce “pross.”
This doesn’t happen very often. When I run into another example, I’ll post it.
A Correct “All Right”
I think one reason I’m slowing down on this site is that I find that I’m doing a lot of repeats. Of course I’m probably the only person on the planet who has read every single post, but still…
Well here’s one that doesn’t happen very often. I see the incorrect word “alright” so often and in such professional contexts, that I think we have an example of linguistic change here. I still don’t like it. “Already” is okay, though.
The correct form is two words: “all right.” Mom gets it correct here:
I mentioned a while back that if you want one word, use “arright.”