Tag Archives: language

Words Worthy of Being Trashed

While I may have written a book on the topic (Literally, the Best Language Book Ever), it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who thinks that some words, phrases, and expressions deserve to be tossed into the … Continue reading

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Trite Trophy Winner 2010: At The End of The Day

Gene Collier, a sports columnist for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, has awarded the “Trite Trophy” to a deserving sports cliche for the past 27 years. In the column, he mocks commonly used sports phrases and mixed cliches in what has … Continue reading

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Over-Inflated Language

By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever The tendency to say simple things in complicated ways is so common that over-inflated language could be a blog on its own. You might say: There is a tendency … Continue reading

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Talk About a Holiday Special: Everything Is Free at Target!

By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever I know that retailers always try to top each other during the Christmas shopping season, but Target has seemingly gotten carried away: Everything in the store is free, at … Continue reading

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Tone Check

By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever Did you run a grammar check, spell check, and tone check before sending that important e-mail to your boss? If you were like me (until fairly recently), I didn’t … Continue reading

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Punctuation with However

By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever Punctuation errors are fairly common, and one of the most common is when using the word however to connect two independent clauses. It’s not as simple as just slapping … Continue reading

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Language And Grammar Resources (and More)

In case you hadn’t noticed, we changed the look of the blog recently. The most recent template didn’t highlight the pages on the site as well as this one does, so let me introduce (or re-introduce) some of the pages … Continue reading

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Interview: A New Definition, Thanks to Randy Moss

By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever I love it when professional athletes talk. If it’s not a humorous mixture of mangled cliches and mixed metaphors, then it’s some outlandish, self-centered statement that only a media … Continue reading

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I Wish I Was Wrong, But I’m Not: More on Subjunctive

By Paul Yeager, author of Literally, the Best Language Book Ever Sherry previous wrote about the subjunctive mood (Subjunctive Uses Were Not Was) a while ago, but I recently wrote about it on my writing tips for my job at … Continue reading

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If/Then Construction

When I put my meteorology hat aside and focus on editing, one of the most persistent errors I see is with the if/then construction when using a conditional sentence. When one clause of sentence is only true if a condition … Continue reading

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