The Tongue Untied | A Guide to Grammar, Punctuation and Style

5-Punctuation, 8-Small Things That Matter, Featured Posts, Hyphens

Perhaps no piece of punctuation gives us more trouble than the hyphen, in particular when we are trying to decide whether to hyphenate a compound modifier. In that realm, the average writer is as consistent as the stock market these days. So, let’s review: When a noun has more than one modifier, the modifiers are hyphenated when [...]

7-Writing/Editing, Featured Posts

Editors’ pens have been bleeding red for years in an attempt to eliminate misplaced modifiers, but the problem shows little sign of improvement. Writers continue to perplex readers and torment editors with adjectives, adverbs and phrases scattered about like so much glitter at kid’s craft project. Like their sparkly craft cousin, modifiers stick — heedless [...]

1-Parts of Speech, Adjectives

Types of Adjectives: Limiting

Posted on 23 September 2009

LIMITING ADJECTIVE: These types of adjectives specify or limit the noun. [In the following examples, the adjective is bold and the noun is underlined.] The two teams have met every season since 1932. TWO tells us how many TEAMS and EVERY tells us how many SEASONS. Note: It does not describe the teams; it tells us which ones to limit [...] Continue Reading

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1-Parts of Speech, Adjectives

Types of Adjectives: Descriptive

Posted on 23 September 2009

DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVE: These types of adjectives add detail or description to the noun. [In the following examples, the adjective is bold and the noun is underlined.] When Tennessee and Connecticut first met in women’s basketball in 1995, it was a nice made-for-TV game between an established power and one on the rise. NICE describes the predicate nominative GAME and [...] Continue Reading

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4-Agreement

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Posted on 26 June 2009

The first and most important rule in subject verb agreement is that the verb must agree with the intended number of the subject. To accomplish that task, follow two occasionally not so simple tasks. 1. Identify the real subject 2. Determine whether subject is singular or plural Continue Reading

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3-Case

Making the Case

Posted on 26 June 2009

The case of a pronoun indicates whether the pronoun initiates the action (e.g., subjective case), receives the action (e.g., objective case) or conveys ownership (e.g., possessive case). Continue Reading

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