Mistake Monday

MISTAKE MONDAY for July 27: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. Don’t feel bad if you don’t identify it immediately. I had to check my notes to catch this one, even though I’d spotted right away when I made this screenshot months ago.   I post these challenges to raise […]

dictionary

Moot or not?

For years, I assumed that if something was “moot,” it didn’t matter, or wasn’t worth arguing about. Was I ever wrong! However, it turns out that I have company in misunderstanding this word. Here’s what I discovered thumbing through Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage. Moot means arguable or subject […]

top posts

Top posts from 2020’s second quarter

Check out my top posts from the second quarter! They’re a mix of practical tips on marketing (#1), writing (#2, #3, #5) and punctuation (#4). Ready-to-use content for financial advisors—Everyone wishes for marketing shortcuts. If you don’t have time to write your own content, you may consider using content written by others. It’s not ideal. […]

Happy reader

4 great tips for writing sentences

Joe Moran’s First You Write a Sentence has some great sentences about sentences. Here’s a sampling of them, sorted by the lesson they suggest. 1. Slow down Moran writes: Most of us, when we write, march too quickly on to the next sentence. To write intelligibly is hard enough, so be sure you have done that […]

Mistake Monday

MISTAKE MONDAY for June 29: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. If the writer used a proofreader, they should have caught this obvious error. I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.