Tag Archives: spelling

Treasure Hunt #2

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Grammar Tips, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

As promised, here is a second exercise for you to practice your proofreading skills. Only this time, the stakes are a little higher because there are three kinds of errors rather than just one. So put on your magic glasses and proofread the following essay for a total of 15 errors: 6 errors in missing words or word endings, 5 errors in apostrophe use, and 4 errors in sentence punctuation (placement of periods). Check back next week for the answers. 4/11 – Note: Answers are now posted!Proofreading 3

Writing an Essay

After much experimenting, Sam finally learn (learned) the best way to write an essay for the school magazine there (magazine. There) were several steps, and each step was essential in achieving the goal of good (of a good) essay.

The first step involved making a list of possible topic’s (topics) that he thought would be interesting to his audience and then narrowing his choices until he found the one he liked best. After he decide (decided) what his thesis was going to be. Sam (be, Sam) made a rough outline of main points that would support the thesis and wrote his first draft in one sitting. Sams (Sam’s) tutor had advised him not to worry at this point about punctuation, spelling, or other mechanics but just to concentrate on getting the idea’s  (ideas) down on paper.

The second step involved reading the first draft for it’s  (its) content and organization. Sam improved the paper by adding more explanation where was (where it was) needed, taking out irrelevant material, and strengthening his introduction and conclusion, he (conclusion. He) also proofread this draft for errors in sentence punctuation, word choice, subject-verb agreement, and comma use. Experience with other assignments had taught him that he made those errors most often, so he took time look (time to look) especially for those.

The last and most important step was to put the paper away for a few hour’s, that (hours. That) enabled him to look at it again with fresh eyes. He read it once more for content. Then he took his finger and pointed at each word while reading it out loud in order to find any errors he might have overlook (overlooked) before.

The day he sent the finished essay to his editor, Sam was confident that he had done his best. It was a good feeling to know that he had made progress in producing a well-written and error-free document.

The 15 errors are underlined, and the correct forms are in parentheses. Note that the answer for hour’s, that actually contains 2 errors.

 

Treasure Hunt #1

21 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Grammar Tips, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

HomophonesAs promised last week, I’m posting the first of several proofreading exercises to give you practice in finding your own errors. We’ll start off with one that focuses on only one kind of error: words that are pronounced the same (or nearly the same) but are spelled differently and have different uses. Our English spelling system contains a number of these word pairs (or triplets). They are often a stumbling block for writers and are hard to pick out when proofreading because Spell Check doesn’t flag them. Examples include your/you’re, whose/who’s, though/through, to/too/two, and than/then.

So here’s a short essay for you to proofread for only that kind of error. The challenge is to find the 15 words that are used incorrectly and replace them with the correct words. Take as much time as you want. Accuracy is more important than speed! I’ll be posting the answers next week so you can see how well you did. Now put on those reading glasses or grab that magnifying glass and begin your search!

The Cemetery

Your not going to believe this, but I was once offered the position of manager of a cemetery. The Charles Baber Cemetery in Pottsville, PA was willed to Trinity Episcopal church by Charles  Baber, a member who had established the cemetery many years before. I didn’t no weather to accept the job or not. It was not quite what I was used to, but then it was the only offer I had, so I took it.

The first week on the job I took a tour though the cemetery and the beautiful chapel that had been built opposite the entrance. The cemetery was located on rolling hills just off the center of town and reminded me of  a quite park. There were many different varieties of trees and the remains of a pond were children used to ice skate in the winter. An old barn originally housed the funeral carriage and it’s team of white horses that pulled it in funeral processions passed rows of silent spectators.

In the office of the church, I found several very large books that contained the burial records for the cemetery. The entries dated back to the 1800s and every entry was handwritten. I had too handle the books with great care because some of there bindings were lose. It was also hard to tell sometimes who’s body was in which plot because the plot numbers in the book didn’t always correspond to the map of the cemetery.

Even through the job lasted only a year, I was more then satisfied with what I learned about the history of the cemetery and the people buried there. Its not every day that a job opens up to manage a place that people are dying to get into!

***

Feel free to share this exercise with friends or use it in your classroom. It’s an original essay I wrote a number of years ago and describes a real job I had. Students in my developmental writing classes struggled with it, but those who spent the most time found the most errors. Persistence pays off!

Five Proofreading Tips

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Grammar Tips, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Proofreading 2Are you one of those writers who have a lot to say and can say it well, but who seems to have a blind spot for finding your own spelling errors or misplaced commas? If so, take heart!

After nearly a quarter of a century helping college students improve their writing skills, I’m convinced that it is possible to improve your proofreading ability. It takes concentration, effort, and a willingness to spend a little more time with your writing than you might normally want to do, but in the end what a difference it can make in the quality of your final product! Yes, you may still have to rely on the extra-sharp eyes of a professional (That’s why we’re here!) for a final go-through, but just imagine how much more satisfying it will feel when you can catch some of those pesky errors for yourself!

So if you were unfortunate enough to miss the lesson in school on basic proofreading techniques or are just looking for a  quick review, here are five tried and true ones to get you started.

  1. Be sure to use Spell Check and Grammar Check (or similar programs) but do not rely solely on them. Neither one can read your mind and know what you really wanted to say. Spell Check, for example, will not flag a word like “defiantly,” even though you meant “definitely.” Grammar Check is still not sophisticated enough — and may never be — to cover every possible variation in sentence structure and punctuation available in English.
  2. Don’t proofread immediately after you finish writing something. Put it away for at least an hour, and then come back to it with a clear mind and fresh eyes.
  3. Proofread for only one error at a time. It seems redundant but will help you focus on finding just those words that need apostrophes (or not!) or on searching out all those places where there are missing words and/or word endings.
  4. Use a ruler or your finger to slow down your eye so that you see exactly what is on the page and not what you know should be there.
  5. Read your paper out loud to yourself, again reading only what’s actually on the page. This technique is especially helpful for finding awkward or missing wording or incomplete sentence structure. If it doesn’t sound right to you, then it’s definitely not going to make sense to your reader!

These five techniques have proved to be helpful to other writers who struggle with finding their own pesky errors. Hopefully, they’ll prove helpful to you! But practice makes perfect, so stay tuned.

For the next several weeks, I’ll be posting short proofreading exercises for those who want to test their own ability to find errors in word usage, apostrophes, and sentence punctuation.

Join the fun!

 

What kind of word is “chirurgery”?

22 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Interesting Facts about Medical Practice 1880-1930, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Looking at WordsIn my research for the biography of my great-grandfather, I’ve come across this word, chirurgery or its related forms chirurgical and chirurgeon, a number of times. It didn’t take long to figure out that it must be a variant form of surgery, surgical, or surgeon. But where did it come from and when did it disappear from common use? I don’t think I have the complete story yet, but here’s what I know so far about this intriguing word.

It’s a known fact that English vocabulary is rife with words borrowed from other languages.And it’s also well known that many of our medical terms find their origin in Greek and/or Latin. The Latin term for surgery was chirurgia, while the Greek form was cheirourgia. But the spelling in Old French was serurghien, which was later modified to surgien. So it appears that the word in Middle English, surgerie, followed the French spelling rather than the Latin or Greek.

Then the Renaissance came along. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), sometime around the 16th century, the spelling of the word in English reverted to the Greek-influenced form chirurgery, with the accompanying pronunciation of the first syllable as a k sound rather than an s, and with the accent on the second syllable. That would make it sound something like “ki-rur’-dgery.” Think of it like the first syllable in chiropractic. In both cases the “chi” means “hand” in Greek.

What I still can’t find is any evidence of when the spelling and pronunciation shifted back to our current form. The latest use of chirurgery that I could find cited in the OED was dated 1846. But I have seen it still used in documents printed in the late 1800s. So I am guessing that by the beginning of the 20th century at least, we had managed to shake off the influence of those Renaissance pundits and went back to the original spelling and pronunciation of surgery. In every dictionary I consulted, the variant chirurgery is now labeled as “archaic.”

If you have any more information about the history of this word, please share it!

Spelling Tip #3: Space or No Space?

15 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Grammar Tips, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

DictionaryBelieve it or not, a space between two words can make a huge difference! No, I’m not talking about life and death issues, but deciding whether or not to use a space can make a real difference in the meaning of what you are trying to communicate.

Here is one real-life example of what I mean: A) The boys were playing along while in the snow.  B) The boys were playing a long while in the snow.

In this case, the meaning of the first sentence is that the boys were going along with whatever was happening and the activity happened to be in the snow. The meaning of the second sentence is that the boys were out playing in the snow for a considerable time. Just one little space –a blank –can change the meaning of a sentence!

In other cases of space or no space, you must choose the right one for the right situation. Here are some more real-life examples:

A) The suspect went into his house at 11 p.m.  B) The suspect went in to find his gun.

A) Sometime last night, the gas station was robbed.  B) That station had been targeted for quite some time.

A) There is always someone willing to help.  B) All ways to solve the problem will be accepted.

Then there are those words that are simply spelled wrong quite frequently. One that makes me see red is the misspelling of “nowadays” as “now days,” and that just doesn’t work! One that I have more tolerance for is “a lot” spelled as one word, “alot.” It is a common error, but still considered an error. Even auto-correct will catch that one.

A similar error is spelling “all right” as “alright.” But in this case, the one-word spelling remains in common and acceptable use. Figure that one out! The explanation in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com) may shed a little light: “The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing.”

So there you have it! Those little spaces between some words are important. Be sure to pay attention to them when you proofread.

If you’d like to share similar examples, feel free to post them in a comment!

 

Helpful Spelling Tip #1

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Grammar Tips

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Spelling

There are many reasons why our English spelling system is confusing. With the advent of the printing press back in 1440, spelling became much more uniform. Dictionaries emerged to further solidify the correct spelling of words. Then over time, pronunciations of some words shifted, but the spelling remained the same. Our habit of borrowing words from other languages and then changing them – or not – to fit our spelling and pronunciation systems has made the whole affair even messier. So we are stuck in the mire of our own making, and the only solution is to don waders and muck our way through.

Spell Check isn’t smart enough to catch these vagaries, so one way to remember some of the inconsistencies is to group words with similar spellings and/or pronunciations and just outright memorize them.

Here is Helpful Spelling Tip #1 to get you started.

Many people confuse the words loose and lose, and for good reason. The word loose is spelled like the word choose, so the temptation is to use loose as you would use choose, as in I don’t want to loose my iPad.

Unfortunately, even though the spellings are similar, in this case the pronunciations are different. In choose, the -s sounds like -z; in loose, the -s sounds like -s. So the above sentence should read I don’t want to lose my iPad.

One way to remember this pronunciation difference is to pair loose with goose, and pair lose with booze. That might result in a nonsense sentence like The loose goose will lose its booze.

Or if you’re more comfortable memorizing the three verb forms, you could start muttering in your sleep every night: choose, chose, chosen and lose, lost, lost.

Other than these tips, I’m afraid I’ve exhausted my imagination. If you have found other ways to keep loose and lose/choose and chose straight in your mind, please feel free to share.

Affect vs. Effect

23 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Grammar Tips, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

question mark

AFFECT vs. EFFECT

These two words are so close in spelling and pronunciation, it’s no wonder people get them confused. The easiest way to keep them straight is to remember this little mantra: Use affect when you are describing an action (verb); use effect when you are naming something (noun).

Examples: The weather always affects the attendance at my son’s soccer games. (influences)

                      My mother affected agreement even though she disapproved of my decision. (pretended)

                       Lacy’s accident had an immediate effect on the mood of the party. (outcome, result)

                        Lacy’s tears were purely for effect. (distinctive impression)

If that were the whole story, it wouldn’t be so hard to keep them separate, would it? Unfortunately, there’s more. Affect can sometimes be used as a noun, while effect can sometimes be used as a verb. Isn’t English fun?

Thankfully, affect is used as a noun only in the context of psychology, and the accent is on the first syllable rather than the second. It refers to the display of emotion or mood. Example: Jason displayed no affect when he was confronted with the murder weapon.

Effect as a verb means to make something happen, to cause to come into being, or to put into operation. Example: The goal of the demonstration had been to effect a major change in campus politics.

Using effect as the verb instead of affect will change the meaning of the entire sentence, so tread lightly here!

          The adverse publicity affected the election of Mr. Jones. (Mr. Jones may or may not have been elected.)

          The adverse publicity effected the election of Mr. Jones. (Mr. Jones was elected.)

     Explanation: The verb affect denotes having an effect or influence. The verb effect goes beyond mere influence and refers to actual achievement of a final result.

If you’ve followed this far, good for you! Now you can confidently use affect and effect correctly in every situation. If you’re still a little confused, just remember the first two examples at the top and you’ll probably be correct 99% of the time.