Grammar Matters: Your A Great Role Model

Okay, read that again.  If you’re not noticing the grammatical error, you’re not alone.  It should read: YOU’RE A Great Role Model The confusion between YOUR and YOU’RE is most obvious on Twitter.  I would like to believe that the use of YOUR for YOU’RE is an attempt to conserve characters. But just in case, let’s [...]

Attention to Detail on Indepednence Blvd

How many workers looked at this sign, knew it was misspelled, but probably said, “it’s not my job?”  Or worse, didn’t realize it was misspelled.  Major fail.  I wonder how much money and manpower it will take to fix it. According to the Charlotte Observer, there will be no cost to taxpayers. Somehow, I highly doubt [...]

Grammar Matters: Whose and Who’s

I always get these confused, so much so that I avoid using either all together.  Finally, I took the two minutes needed to refresh my memory and understand the difference between the two. According to Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage: This is one of those cases where it is important to remember that possessive [...]

Grammar Matters: Your Always Welcome Here

If the sign looks correct to you, then keep on reading!  It should be “you’re always welcome here,” – not “your.”  Though a common mistake, Copyblogger calls the your/you’re error as one of the five that make you look dumb. Nobody wants that! Every time I see this type of error I cringe.  So let’s [...]

Irregardless

Regardless of what you have heard, “irregardless” is NOT a word,  it is a redundancy. The suffix “-less” on the end of the word already makes the word negative. It doesn’t need the negative prefix “ir-” added to make it even more negative. Recognize. Grammar Rules…

Grammar Matters: Everyone Needs There Own Farecard

Lucky for this station manager, a signature wasn’t required.  No such luck for us at work with emails, letters, and other documents.  Grammar does matter.  People do make judgment calls based on our written word.  There, their, and they’re. Use there when referring to a place, whether concrete (“over there by the building”) or more [...]

Workplace Gaffes aka Did I Pronounce That Correctly?

How apropos! I may have already been guilty this week. I just downloaded a new Dictionary.com Blackberry App (it’s free by the way, and no I’m not getting paid for this, though I would like a shiny new Blackberry for Christmas). Anyway, the app has some great features including a searchable dictionary, thesaurus, words of [...]

The Difference Between Miss, Mrs., and Ms.

Every time I fill out an application or form, more often than not I am given the choice of Miss, Mrs., or Ms.  And until Prince Charming arrives my only choices (and confusion) have been Miss or Ms.  Perhaps smarter people than I are aware of the differences.  But until I read the recent On [...]

Eminent and Imminent

While writing a memo the other day I had a brain freeze on the differences in meaning of eminent and imminent.  Fortunately for me there’s Google and I avoided using the wrong, but similar-sounding, word. But it does serve as a useful reminder for all as eminent and imminent are among the list of commonly [...]