The origins of punctuation date back to ancient Greece, when dramatists like Aristophanes found a need to visually indicate pauses to actors reading and learning scripts. A system of dots, arranged vertically, revealed the length of the pause required to achieve the perfect breathing rhythm and dramatic effect. (more…)

One of the goals of print journalism is concision. Student journalists are often told to imagine a businessman reading a newspaper on the way to work. As his train nears the station, our commuter will just have time to read another 30 words before being swept away into office life. Will he leave the train having read nothing more than an ambiguous headline and a paragraph of vague preamble? Or will your razor-sharp writing tell him everything he needs to know before the train doors open at Clapham Junction? (more…)

As you no doubt remember fondly from your schooldays, the infinitive is essentially the basic version of a verb, such as “to eat” or “to speak”. There is a very long-established convention, also familiar to every schoolchild, that the infinitive must always be preserved and never be ‘split’. Adverbs, this convention says, can gather respectfully around the infinitive but must never intrude into the middle, so that “to eat slowly” is fine but “to slowly eat” is forbidden. (more…)

People will remember 2010 for many reasons. We saw a coalition government in the UK for the first time since 1945. England’s footballers went to the World Cup in South Africa and barely had time to unpack their boots before coming home again. An unpronounceable volcano in Iceland threw a hissy fit and caused chaos throughout Europe. Something interesting must have happened in Nebraska. But here at the 80:20 Communications ‘Express Yourself’ desk, we kept our eyes on the world of grammar, spelling and punctuation. And we didn’t like what we saw. So for our first blog of 2011, here is our Top Five list of errors we spotted in the media world in 2010. Let’s make it our goal to banish these irritations into the history of last year. (more…)

Anybody learning to speak a language must sometimes feel as if the entire exercise has been designed to confuse. English is certainly no exception. Having mastered the basic conjugation of verbs, for example, our poor student understands how singular or plural nouns affect a sentence. With plural nouns, for example, he knows that: “All the children were happy,” or: “Three of the children were happy.” If only a single chap is enjoying the party, however: “One of the children was happy.” Straightforward grammar. (more…)