Tora Writing

Category: Usage

  • How to Learn to Love Your Language: Insult with Style

    How to Learn to Love Your Language: Insult with Style

    *** DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating being nasty or hurting people’s feelings.Just being creative when you are and might. *** One of the best reasons to have an expansive vocabulary is so that you can insult people with style. Crassly insulting someone/thing in public is generally frowned upon. For example, “you’re f-ing ugly” is a…

  • Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable, English is Weird or am I Just Saying it Wrong?

    Have you ever looked at a word, pronounced it in your head, and then not know what everyone else is talking about? You are probably suffering from Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable syndrome (pronounced Em-Fā-Siss on the Wrong Sa-Lab-El). My best personal example is Appomattox. I walked into US History class one day and that…

  • Excite Your Senses: Take a Walk Through the Thesaurus

    Scratching my head, trying to come up with a blog idea, I went to Evernote to check out some of my random blog ideas, and I came across a link to 204 Words to Describe Colours (the article is out of South Africa, they spell like the British). Then I hit the links for taste…

  • Word Rant: Percent

    Word Rant: Percent

    Language evolves. Words change meaning – sometimes to the opposite of the original definition. I get this, sometimes I encourage it, sometimes I don’t. However, there are some incorrectly used words that evolution will never fix. Today’s rant is around the use of the word “percent.” Simply put, percent means “of 100.” It is another…

  • I Want To Recklessly Split Infinitives

    I Want To Recklessly Split Infinitives

    OK, maybe not recklessly, I just get a kick out of twisting the noses of the Grammar Nazis out there. Yes, I’ve ranted about the split infinitive before; now I’m doing it again. And I’m doing it because it bugs me how people say that it is now OK to break the rule without explaining…

  • Active Language Leads to a Happy Life

    Active Language Leads to a Happy Life

    Do you live life or does life happen to you? I suspect that if you are actively living life you are having a lot more fun than those who let life happen. And for those of us who let life happen – even just some of the time – how can we tap into that…

  • The “Should” of Expectations

    The “Should” of Expectations

    Ages ago, I wrote about “should” and what I define as the right and wrong way to use that word. Recently, while speaking with one of my various coaches, I mentioned that something was expected. Her response was that an expectation is just as bad as a should. And I realized that it was time…

  • Does that Word Make You Happy, Sad, or Mad?

    Does that Word Make You Happy, Sad, or Mad?

    One of the things I do for editing clients is question their word choices. My best example was when I convinced a client that she didn’t want to use the word “manifesto” on her website – even though she was using it correctly. I find that people’s brains tend to go to one of two…

  • Punctuation for Clear Communication

    Punctuation for Clear Communication

    I tell people that I edit for readability – and that readability is not always grammatically correct. I tell people that because I am not fluent in the formal terms of grammar. I don’t want to try to defend my edits based on participles, infinitives, dangling modifiers, or gerunds. (No matter how many times I…

  • What Color is Your Language?

    What Color is Your Language?

    After writing my “Ode to the Thesaurus,” I started to think about how I could write a multitude of such Odes and have a great time. The problem is that I’d probably lose my readership. This left me at a bit of a loss for blog topics. Recently, I bought a second pack of colored…