Notes from Aboveground
Writing for the sake of writing. You didn’t ask, but read if so inclined.
The Notes
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Using full-date (day-month-year and month-day-year) styles in running text is subject to a publisher’s preferred house style. Both day-month-year and month-day-year formats are commonly used and equally valid, even if one may make more intuitive sense than the other. However, regardless of the format being used, there are some punctuation and style standards to keep…
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With the midterms coming up in the United States, several people are talking about highly competitive gubernatorial elections. A gubernatorial role is that of a governor, so what is up with the guber part in the adjective form? Again, we’ll explore why English makes no sense until we look a bit closer at some word…
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The air was a viscous pane through which I looked into the world. I sat frozen under the weight of the heat as a bead of sweat rolled from my freshly shaved lip onto my grey shirt. Overhead, the ceiling fan turned and moved nothing. Even the bees were still.
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You are probably wondering what kind of knowledge could possibly be gleaned from such a pedestrian and “easy” topic as time—we all know this boring stuff from primary school. However, bear with me a moment as several nuances emerge when we look at things more closely. For example, did you know that AM (with capital…
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Today’s post is about how to include currency and money values in your documents. Included here are a handful of practices based on five reputable style manuals used internationally. Notes are available at the end for further research and reading. Using Symbols When setting body text with currency symbols ($, ¢, €, ¥, £, p,…
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Today’s topic is on subjects, not royal ones but grammatical ones. Using the tips here can help you create more clarity in writing, which is especially important when writing to diverse audiences who may not be highly fluent in English.
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Figurative language is one of the largest subjects in rhetoric, easily filling several chapters in texts dedicated to rhetoric. Today’s topic covers two types of related figurative devices
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Today, anyone who understands or studies English knows the English alphabet has twenty-six letters. Emphasis on the word today since English has lost and gained several letters over the centuries. Many of these losses and gains help us explain why we pronounce the same letter combinations differently. For example, th in this doesn’t sound the…
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A common tip for cutting wordiness is to delete in order in phrasings like in order to. I’ve given that advice myself, but it rarely comes with much of an explanation. Today, I expand on that recommendation, including when not to follow it.