Abbreviations With Periods

Some abbreviations don’t have periods, such as “NASA.” And we pronounce it like a word. But some abbreviations are easily misunderstood without periods. For example, the abbreviation for “United States.” Without the periods, the U.S. might be treated as a pronoun. See below:

When I first saw this, I considered making it into a lesson about “we” and “us.” Then I read the whole sentence. Saying “U.S. diplomats” would have removed the ambiguity, wouldn’t it?

Periodize your abbreviations when you need to remove ambiguity!

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A pleonasm is when you have one or more unnecessary words in a sentence. Here’s an example:

Obviously you don’t need both “still” and “yet.” But what about “shoot”?

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but spelled and defined differently. Here are a bunch of examples.

These can be a source of trouble for ESL folks.

You see both solecisms, right?

I don’t need to point out the misspelling and the misplaced comma, do I?

Mr. Fitz is an English teacher, so I like the strip a lot.

I definitely try to avoid linking verbs in my writing…