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May 6, 2002 · Thomas of Erfurt. Thomas of Erfurt was the most influential member of a group of later medieval philosophers known as the speculative grammarians or Modistae (Modists), after the central place they assigned to the modi significandi (modes of signification) of a word in their analyses of human discourse. The notion that a word, once it has been ...
May 16, 2019 · A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies the wrong thing because the intended subject is missing from the sentence.
- Read Frequently
- Follow Ladders on Flipboard!
- Memorize Homophones
- Learn First-Person Singular Pronouns
- Learn How to Use Commas
- Beware The Dangling Modifier
- Stay Active
- Proofread and Read Your Piece Out Loud
Writing well can become second nature to those who also read well. Pay attention to how authors structure their sentences and how they use commas and sentence length to adjust tone and cadence. Reading can help to increase vocabulary. If you don’t know where to begin, ask colleagues for reading suggestions specific to your field, or browse best-sel...
Follow Ladders’ magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and more! To write well, you must also understand the basics of the English language — how sentences are composed, the different parts of speech, subject/verb agreement, tense, and punctuation. Pick up a copy of Stephen King’s “On Writing” for a...
There’s no way around it — many rules in the English language require memorization. Among the most frequently committed grammatical errors are misused homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings. “You’re/your,” “there/their/they’re,” “its/it’s,” and “then/than” are all commonly confused. An easy tool to help with con...
Sentences often call for choosing the correct first-person singular pronoun — either “I” or “me.” Remember that “I” is a subject pronoun, whereas “me” is an object pronoun. A helpful way to determine word choice is to remove any other subjects. For example, consider the sentence “My roommate and I/me went to the store.” If you think about the sente...
As a very broad rule of thumb, commas are used to indicate pauses in a sentence. They should not be used in place of a period. For example, “We went to the baseball field, it was fun” is incorrect. But “We went to the baseball field, and it was fun” is correct, as commas can be used to separate two independent clauses when joined by coordinating co...
A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that doesn’t have a clear subject. “After reviewing your notes, the conclusion remains elusive” contains a dangling modifier. Who is reviewing the notes? The sentence should be rewritten to say, “After reviewing your notes, I am unable to come to a conclusion.”
All sentences are identified as being either active or passive. In an active sentence, the subject performs the action. “The girl ate the salad” is an active sentence. In a passive sentence, the subject of the sentence is also the subject of the action. “The salad was eaten by the girl” is a passive sentence. Though both are grammatically correct, ...
A common cause of poor writing is time, as writers often power through emails and memos, giving a document a cursory glance before sending it to colleagues or clients. Step away from your piece before you submit it, and give it a thorough proofread. Reading your writing in a new form — for example, on paper instead of on a screen; in a different fo...
Nov 14, 2019 · Word class analysis has long been familiar in Europe under the title parts of speech, and since medieval times grammarians have operated with nine word classes or parts of speech: noun, verb, pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, article, and interjection.
Oct 14, 2014 · Here, in Merriam-Webster’s “Ask the Editor” feature, associate editor Emily Brewster explains that flat adverbs were much more common before 18th-century grammarians insisted that words not ...
Jul 5, 2021 · Avoid these 24 overused words and phrases that make you sound ‘pretentious,’ say grammar experts. Careful what you say or type at work — because it could backfire. As word and grammar ...
Some linking verbs, like seem, are often followed by to and a verb; the adjective or noun (or adjective phrase or noun phrase) that follows that verb describes or identifies the subject: Yodeling seems to be a required skill for grammarians.
