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Tag Archives: notes
Language Note of the Week 30
Take three seconds and shorten this sentence: “What Ralph evokes in Randy is something new.” “_______ evokes in Randy __ something new.” Or: “Ralph evokes something new in Randy.” Unless you need time to think, or unless you want to … Continue reading
Language Note of the Week 29
Some sneaky adjectives look like they should be adverbs because they end in -ly. “We piled our dishes DISORDERLY” is wrong. “She passed him a cup of tea MOTHERLY” is equally wrong. There are a few solutions here: 1) opt … Continue reading
Language Note of the Week 28
How’s this for a non-informative (and real!) newspaper headline? “Billionaire investor was keen on investing, fraud trial told” No kidding. And avid dancers like to dance. Avoid such repetition in your writing. Admittedly, I have never received such a banal … Continue reading
Language Note of the Week 27
Some typographical niceties today: 1) Don’t use two apostrophes (‘’…’’) instead of quotation marks (“…”). 2) Make sure your quotations marks face in the right direction – i.e. that they are looking at the quoted text. This is wrong: ”quoted … Continue reading
Language Note of the Week 26
Short and not simple this week: instead of the half-Slovenglish “how it would be like…,” write “what it would be like to…” NOT: “I wonder how it would be like to climb Everest.” BUT: “I wonder WHAT it would be … Continue reading
Jason Blake’s Language Tips
Jason Blake, a teacher at the English Department in Ljubljana and also a member of the Association for the Study of English, has kindly agreed to share the weekly language tips that he prepares for his students with the readers … Continue reading