Category: Grammar and Punctuation

Each week, we chat about the quirks and anomalies of the English language. This week, it’s a new year… Q: Happy New Year AWC! A: Thanks, and you too. May 2015 be filled with many more questions and answers. Q: Absolutely! And on the subject of New Year’s – do I

Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation. This week, we’re getting festive… Q: Season’s Greetings Australian Writers’ Centre! A: Well, you’re in

Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation. This week, parentheses and brackets…   Q: Hi Australian Writers’ Centre, I have a quick

This week, we sit down to a lesson in ligatures with our friendly Q & A participants… Q: Hello, do you think I have the Ebola virus?  A: No. Q: Okay, great, just thought I should check. Now I also want to ask about something I struggle with.  A: Your

This week, we examine when it’s okay to hyphenate adverbs and adjectives and when it’s not…  Q: Hey there, I wrote something but I have a friend who thinks it’s wrong. A: Oh, you have a “friend” who thinks it’s wrong, do you? <wink> Q: What are you doing? A:

They sit right there above the letters on the keyboard, but how do we go with using them? This week we examine numbers… Q: Hi there Australian Writers’ Centre, can I ask a question? A: Well, that capital Q in front of everything you say suggests that you can. What’s

Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation… Q: Hi there, I have a question about possession. A: What kind of possession? We

So, recently on the Q&A segment of our weekly newsletter, we were discussing possessives with proper nouns (names), and one example was compound possessives. When two (or more) people ‘own’ the same thing, and they are named, we only need to indicate possession on the final one: “I was invited

Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation. This week, a word or two about possession… Q: Hello. Every May and September I

Each week, we take an informative and light-hearted look at the important punctuation and grammar issues of the day, including the much-maligned apostrophe. This week, inspired by one of our newsletter readers, we tackle a particularly knotty one… Q: Hi there, I was editing something the other day and saw

Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation. This week, we’re obsessed with buts. Q: Hi Australian Writers’ Centre, I was wondering why

Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation… This week, we head out for a night on the town… Q: My friend Henrietta