Comma Use and Writing Style

Are you a heavy punctuator or a light punctuator?

Don’t know the difference?

Read this article http://www.startribune.com/business/17860429.html in the Star Tribune to find out which camp you belong to. You may also learn a thing or two about mandatory and optional commas…not to mention how your use of commas impacts how the reader may interpret your writing style.

Mortal Syntax

Unlike other disciplines, grammar should not be treated as a list of iron clad rules designed to make writers sweat every prepositional phrase or infinitive they use. As this recent National Public Radio story highlights, grammar, like all language, is creative and constantly evolving. Listen to June Casagrande, author of Mortal Syntax, share her thoughts on these and other grammar related issues by following this link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89307936

Truth...It's in the Eye of the Beholder

Despite the recent spate of scandals surrounding bogus memoirs, stretching the truth or even blatantly fabricating supposedly “true” events is not something new to this literary genre as this Salon.com article whimsically illustrates. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2008/03/07/memoirs/

Celebrate National Grammar Day on March 4th

March 4 is the First Annual National Grammar Day. To learn more about this event, visit http://nationalgrammarday.com/ This Web site lists numerous ways you can celebrate this unusual day from policing your friends about their grammar to keeping an eye out for subtle grammar errors in newspapers and billboards.

Information Competency and Your Health

Information Competency will inevitably help your academic career, but it may also save your life---or the life of someone you love. This article on CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/02/21/ep.web.sites/index.html describes how a Web savvy mother found an innovative treatment for her son’s case of Cat Scratch Fever by searching .gov and .org Web sites. The article also provides some helpful hints about researching accurate medical information on the Web.

Verb Tenses and the Law

Why is grammar important? Beyond just helping us create clear sentences, it may also protect us from criminals as a recent legal case in Georgia illustrates.

Apparently, a convicted sex offender accused of killing a Georgia hiker has been set free because of a technicality in the wording of the federal sex offender registration law.
The defendant’s lawyers argued that the law is written in the present tense, implying that the sex offender must be actively moving from state to state in the present moment to be affected by the legislation, but their client traveled between state lines in the past.

A judge agreed with their argument…until Congress revises the verb tense in the law. Read more at: http://www.wfrv.com/entertainment/weirdnews/story.aspx?content_id=13438fba-cb9a-42ce-b6f6-22758e7e0d67

Lake Superior State University Releases Its Banned Words List

Lake Superior State University just released its annual list of banned words. Some of the honories included on this list include such politically loaded words as "surge" to such redundant phrases as "it is as it is". See the full story at:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071231/ap_on_re_us/banned_words;_ylt=AmkqbUysYKY_b86reHktamVH2ocA

What words would you liked to see banned?