Ask anyone to name a distinguishing characteristic of an adverb, and the reply might be that such a word ends with -ly. Although that is often true, some adverbs, such as fast, lack the ending. For this reason, they are known as flat adverbs. In addition, many words ending in -ly aren’t...
Confusion of a Thing and Its Name
Revise each of the following sentences so that the name of the thing, not the thing itself, is defined.
1. He coined the term “the Silk Road,” a network of Eurasian roads and trade routes.
2. Polygyny translates to “having many wives.”
3. We were introduced to the precocious child Prof,...
How Long Is A Novel?
Before the advent of ebooks, modern fiction writers concerned themselves chiefly with two lengths: long (novels) and short (short stories).
With the advent of digital publishing, the termsnovella and novelette have taken on a new significance.
In the 17th century,...
Verb Review #1: May and Might
The auxiliaries may and might are often used interchangeably. Most of the time, interchanging them doesn’t seem to matter.
Strictly speaking, might is the past form of may, but may often occurs in past tense constructions, and might is used in sentences...
Verb Mistakes #1: Heard on Television
Quite apart from stylistic errors involving redundancy and inapt word choice, television can be a rich source of grammatical errors. Here are four examples.
INCORRECT: Gin was drunken out of necessity, not choice.—Documentary narrator
CORRECT: Gin was drunk out of necessity, not...
Usage Mistakes #1
The sentences below illustrate various types of mistakes in wording born from (not “borne out of”) ignorance or carelessness.
1. All the progress we have made to educate people about the hazards of smoking may be for not.
The writer, perhaps unfamiliar with the termnaught, assumed that the last word...
3 Cases of Too Many Commas
This post illustrates several types of sentences that incorporate excessive punctuation. Each example is followed by a discussion and a revision.
1. Much of what happened between the moment Jones sat on a bench to enjoy the view and police opened fire and killed him, has been the subject of contentious...
How Long Should a Sentence Be?
A few years ago, I wrote a post titled “How Long Should a Paragraph Be?” which argued that various pronouncements that dictate paragraph length (expounded for the benefit of beginning writers, who presumably are aided by the introduction of a circumscribed formula for success in composition) should...
How to Get Your Writing on the Road to Being Read and Spread
Know your audience. Know your product cold. Research. Nail the headline. Write plainly, in the language of your audience. Research more. Write great bullets. Craft a great offer. Include a strong call to action. Et cetera.
These elements are the standard. They get the job done.
But this little...
31 PRACTICAL TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING OVERNIGHT
1. IMPROVE YOUR INFORMATION GATHERING
As they say, “garbage in, garbage out.” You can’t write good stories if your information gathering is flawed.
2. READ EVERYTHING
Good writers are avid readers. Making time to read every day will improve your writing, whether what you read is well written or...
5 Errors in Noun-Verb Agreement
As shown in the examples below, when writers craft sentences with more than one noun or pronoun in the subject, they sometimes misidentify the key noun or pronoun and assign the wrong verb form to it. Discussion and revision in each sentence describes and solves the problem.
1. “Five days are too short...
5 Types of Unnecessary Hyphenation
The sentences below, each followed by a discussion and a revision, illustrate various ways in which a hyphen is used extraneously.
1. He adds that cities should be forced to follow a federally-defined law pertaining to what kinds of benefits restaurants should be required to provide to their employees.
Because...
Kritik Moral dalam Sastra Lisan Daerah Kalimantan Timur
SINGGIH DARU KUNCARA, NITA MAYA VALIANTIEN, SETYA ARIANI
Abstrak
Pelestarian terhadap jenis karya sastra terutama sastra lisan yang hampir memudar dalam masyarakat perlu terus dilakukan salah satunya adalah dengan penelitian kajian sastra lisan. Melalui pendekatan pustaka dan pengambilan data di lapangan...
CULTURAL TERMS TRANSLATION IN HIRATA’S LASKAR PELANGI AND THE IMPACT ON THE TRANSLATION QUALITY
by: Singgih Daru Kuncara
Abstract
This paper aims to evaluate the translation of cultural terms in English version of of the Hirata’s Laskar Pelangi.
This paper investigates also the translation quality of those cultural
terms. The data, in this study, are the terms of culture that exist in
the...
3 Sentences That Cause Confusion
In each of the following sentences, a word or phrase is an obstacle to comprehension. The discussion and revision that follows each example suggests a path to clarity.
1. Technology companies have a very different mind-set to traditional financial institutions.
Comparisons structured as one is in this...
5 Types of Errors in Parallel Construction of Sentences
There are numerous ways to inadvertently derail a sentence by failing to provide consistent structure to parallel elements. The following sentences illustrate various types of pitfalls and how they can be avoided.
1. These audits are performed on both an ongoing basis or as part of due diligence.
Both is...
25 Words Coined by Twentieth-Century Author
This post lists a number of words that were introduced to the English lexicon by novelists and other writers during the twentieth century.
1. beep: Scientist and novelist Arthur C. Clarke came up with this onomatopoeic word for a small, high-pitched signal.
2. blurb: Humorist Gelet Burgess...
Proof and Prove
The following words are related to each other and to words based on the element prob-, seen in a number of words ranging from probe to probable and derived from the Latin verb probare, meaning “demonstrate” or “test.”
The noun proof refers to evidence or something...
5 subject-verb disagreements
When crafting sentences, writers must take care to check that verbs are inflected to correspond with the subject—the word or phrase the verb pertains to—which is not necessarily the most adjacent noun. The following sentences, each discussed and revised beneath the examples, demonstrate the various...
