The Owl heard something on the radio the other day that got his feathers in a twist. To straighten them out again, I said I’d do a post about it. He thought it would be best if I used my own example, though. So, here’s my example. A notice appeared on the school bulletin board: “Whoever ran the gym teacher’s socks up the flagpole should turn himself or herself into…
April 19, 2015
The Owl and I had a question sent to us recently that we are happy to answer here in our grammar and word use feature, A Word with Beth. I’ve heard you should have a space before and after an ellipsis. I have seen in books sometimes there is a space before the ellipsis and sometimes there isn’t. Is there a hard and fast rule on this? … And…
October 19, 2014
The Grammar Owl is back and so is my monthly feature that looks at some question about English language usage and grammar. Today, the Grammar Owl and I want to talk about the words “than” and “then” and when to use one and when the other. (You may have gathered that from the title of this post. 😉 ) A lot of people get the two words confused. I think…
February 16, 2014
No questions were submitted for this month’s Word with Beth, so I will have to wing it. I’ve called on the resident wise owl to assist me. After all, whooooo better to give a hoot about whooooo and whooooom than an owl? The use of ‘whom’ isn’t as common as it once was (rather like owls in the wild in that respect), but it does have its place. And no,…
January 19, 2014
It’s the third Monday of the month, and that means it’s time to look at a grammatical question sent in by one of my readers. Today’s question has us looking at quotation marks. My thanks to the reader who sent this in. Here’s the question: I know when there’s a quotation, the end punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. Like this: “Where are you going, Mommy?” But what about when…
December 15, 2013
Welcome to the first post of my new monthly Question and Answer series on grammar and word usage, “A Word With Beth.” In this series, I will do my best to answer questions sent to me by you, my readers, on the grammar and word use questions that have been perplexing you. To send a question, just email me at mail (at) flubs2fixes (dot) com and I’ll get back to…