America the Beautiful

Writers of English have choices. Most every word we commit to paper (or its electronic equivalent) has a synonym

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2007). Articles>Writing>Grammar>Tropes

Dangling for Position

Dangling modifiers can be humorous for the reader, but humiliating for the writer. They're insidious, creeping into our prose and undermining our sentence structure. But they're easy to find if you know what to look for.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Writing>Grammar

Double Take

When I peer-review a four-page document and insert the word the seventeen times, I wonder: Is this what my company is paying me to do? Am I truly adding value for my customers?

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Editing>Grammar

Double Take

If you write documentation for products that can be dangerous if misused, ambiguity is scarier than rush hour traffic on I-40. If you already know what the sentence means, it's difficult to perceive that it could be taken to mean something else. By stringently applying rules of grammar, you help eliminate potential ambiguity even when you don't perceive it. Technical content is difficult enough to navigate; give the reader a clear path so he can focus on the journey instead of the road.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Writing>Grammar

Emphasize This!

Technical communicators tend to be problem solvers. We ask ourselves, 'How can I make this better?' We don't want our instruction material to simply be serviceable; we want it to help make our readers' lives easier. One way we do that is by anticipating mistakes that users might make if they don't read carefully. We use various techniques to emphasize material that could otherwise be overlooked. Some effective means of drawing the reader's eye to important material are presented below. Note that this article doesn't address safety messages. For proper use of safety messages, consult your corporate guidelines and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2007). Articles>Writing>Grammar

The Humble Hyphen

The hyphen serves a single function. It joins things together: syllables of a word separated at the end of a line; two words used as a compound; or a modifier and the word it describes (when the combination itself is used as a modifier). But for the latter two functions, a hyphen isn't always needed. So how do you decide?

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Writing>Grammar

It's All Relative

When it comes to relative pronouns, incomplete knowledge may lead to frustration and confusion. The pronouns that, which, who, and what serve as relative pronouns when they introduce a relative (or subordinate) clause.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2007). Articles>Writing>Diction>Grammar

It's All Relative

When it comes to relative pronouns, incomplete knowledge may lead to frustration and confusion. The pronouns that, which, who, and what serve as relative pronouns when they introduce a relative (or subordinate) clause.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2007). Articles>Writing>Grammar

Squiggles

Thomas Mann described the writer as somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Nowhere is this truer than for comma use: while most folks float along blithely putting commas in or leaving them out at whim, we agonize over every squiggle. Why? Because we understand that the presence or absence of a comma can change the meaning of a sentence. In our line of work, unclear sentences can have dire consequences for our readers. So we worry.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2005). Articles>Writing>Grammar

The Wicked Which and Other Fairytales

Popular culture is filled with myths about grammar. Taught by generations of English teachers, these stories admonish little children to cling to the straight and narrow path, rather than venturing into the woods of creative communication. Some of these stories are usage guidelines rather than rules, but others are pure fantasy, the flight of some pedagogue's imagination.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2005). Articles>Writing>Grammar