Oh man, just found this blog after trolling through some of the other posts. It's totally my thing! The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks-making fun of bad punctuation since 2005. Check it out here.

From an associated press article on the blog:

The blog wasn't noticed much at first. But about six months ago, things started picking up. "You know how it happens _ one person links to you, then others do. Also, everyone has camera phones now," Keeley said in a phone interview. Earlier this week, she was linked on Yahoo!, which quadrupled her traffic for a couple days to about 2,000 hits _ though her record is still about 3,000 in a day.

What draws people? The humor, but also partly, Keeley admits, a sense of superiority, at least grammatically speaking _ something she tries to avoid herself. "I don't consider myself a prescriptivist or a pedant," she says (really). "So I'm open to critiques of my own language. I make plenty of mistakes myself."

Rampant quote abuse is a pet peeve of many writing teachers, of course. One of them, Pat Hoy, feels the larger problem is not the punctuation missteps _ that's bad enough _ but the reliance on quotes themselves, by writers who should know better.

I suggest you visit it by clicking here.

Hey smallpressers — throught you would find the following post (from my personal blog) of interest — if not, move along, nothing to see here!

Of primary interest to me, as of late, is the use of the hyphen-particularly as it relates to foreign words (especially Japanese)-as we work through Yoko Danno's translation of the Kojiki. I prefer to use them only where it is established convention to do so or where omission would result in ambiguity or confusion. My mantra: when in doubt, leave it out!

Anyway, check out the rest of the post here.

Found 10 persuasive writing techniques that can make your job easier and your case more compelling (especially when marketing your small press or new title). While this list is in no way comprehensive, these 10 strategies are used quite a bit because they have been proven to work.

My favourite line from the article: FTA: "Psychological studies have shown that people are more likely to comply with a request if you simply give them a reason why... even if that reason makes no sense."

Ha ha! This should be known as the 'Chewbacca Defense'!

Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating a win-win situation. You present a case that others find beneficial to agree with. You make them an offer they can't refuse, but not in the manipulative Godfather sense.

It's simply a good deal or a position that makes sense to that particular person. But there are techniques that can make your job easier and your case morecompelling. While this list is in no way comprehensive, these 10 strategies are used quite a bit because they work.

Here's a link to the article.

New York performance poet Taylor Mali, measures his life in a variety of ways: He has five years of experience as a professional spoken word artist; he has one book, one DVD, and three cds; for 10 months, he was the official voice of Burger King; he was a national poetry slam champion four times; three times he appeared on the HBO original series "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry".

For nine years he taught college, high school, and middle school; and once, in a single SCRABBLE game, he earned a score of 581; but MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, after hearing his work, 118 people have told him they will now become teachers.

Check him on youtube reading the 'Impotence of Proofreading'.

Has this ever happened to you?
You work very, very horde on a paper for English clash
And still get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=)
and all because you are the liverwurst spoiler in the whale wide word
Yes, Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence.

This is a problem that affects manly, manly students all over the word.
I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term
that my English torturer in my sophomoric year,
Mrs. Myth, she said I would never get into a good colleague.
And that¹s all I wanted, that's all any kid wants at that age
just to get into a good colleague.
Not just anal community colleague,
because I wouldn¹t be happy at just anal community colleague.

I really need to be challenged, challenged menstrually
I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation,
I know this makes me sound like a stereo,
but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal colleague.
So if I did not improvement
or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison
(in Prison, New Jersey).

So I got myself a spell checker
and figured I was on Sleazy Street.

But there are several missed aches
that a spell chukker can¹t can¹t catch catch.
For instant, if you accidentally leave out word
your spell exchequer won¹t put it in you.
And God for billing purposes only
you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling
your spell Chekhov might replace a word
with one you had absolutely no detention of using.

Because what do you want it to douch?
It only does what you tell it to douche.
You¹re the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit.
It just goes to show you how embargo
one careless little clit of the mouth can be.

Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint.
The teacher took the paper that I had written on A Sale of Two Titties
No I'm cereal, I am cereal
she read it out loud in front of all of my assmates.
It was the most humidifying experience of my life,
being laughed at pubically.

So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice:
One: There is no prostitute for careful editing.
And three: When it comes to proofreading,
the red penis your friend.

Spank you

New York performance poet Taylor Mali, measures his life in a variety of ways: He has five years of experience as a professional spoken word artist; he has one book, one DVD, and three cds; for 10 months, he was the official voice of Burger King; he was a national poetry slam champion four times; three times he appeared on the HBO original series "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry"; for nine years he taught college, high school, and middle school; and once, in a single SCRABBLE game, he earned a score of 581; but MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, after hearing his work, 118 people have told him they will now become teachers. Please help me welcome the man who wants to create one thousand new teachers, Taylor Mali."

When people confuse the following, it makes me nauseated.  If you're nauseated, it means you're feeling sick. If you're nauseous, it means you're making others sick (causing nausea in others).

I hear people say "I'm feeling nauseous," and I think to myself "please stay away from me, I don't want to become nauseated."

Check out the list of my pet peeves:

• adverse / averse
• affect / effect
• aggravate
• alleged
• all right
• altogether
• among / between
• assure / ensure / insure
• auger / augur
• average / median
• blatant / flagrant
• capital / capitol
• complement / compliment
• comprise
• consul / council / counsel
• convince / persuade
• discreet / discrete
• disinterested / uninterested
• enervate
• enormity / enormousness
• factoid
• fewer/ less
• flammable / inflammable
• flaunt / flout
• forte
• gender / sex
• hopefully
• impact
• impeach
• imply / infer
• incredible / incredulous
• irony
• irregardless
• its / it's
• kudos
• lay / lie
• leave / let
• literally
• mass / weight
• mean
• mischievous
• nuclear
• parameter
• penultimate
• peruse
• phenomenon
• plus
• precipitate / precipitous
• prescribe / proscribe
• presently
• principal / principle
• renown
• reticent
• sacrilegious
• seasonable / seasonal
• sensual / sensuous
• set / sit
• that / which
• unexceptionable / unexceptional
• unique
• utilize / use
• wherefore
• wreak / wreck
•  zoology

Reminds me of the Al Yankovic song:

Except she was always using the word "infer"
When she obviously meant "imply"
And I know that somw guys can put up with that kinda thing
But frankly, I can't imagine why

And I told her, I said "Hey"
Are we playin' horseshoes, honey?
No I don't think we are
You're close (close) but no cigar

Anyway, anybody here have any pet peeves regarding commonly confused words?

Here's a fantastic selection of tools for writers of any style. This is a list of tips aimed at improving your writing skills that I cribbed from another site here. Before you start firing off submissions to publishers or you embark on that eBook writing project, do yourself a favor and review.

• Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right
  
• Writing Tool #2: Use Strong Verbs
  
• Writing Tool #3: Beware of Adverbs
  
• Writing Tool #4: Period As a Stop Sign
  
• Writing Tool #5: Observe Word Territory
  
• Writing Tool #6: Play with Words
  
• Writing Tool #7: Dig for the Concrete and Specific
  
• Writing Tool #8: Seek Original Images
  
• Writing Tool #9: Prefer Simple to Technical
  
• Writing Tool #10: Recognize Your Story's Roots
  
• Writing Tool #11 Back Off or Show Off
  
• Writing Tool #12: Control the Pace
  
• Writing Tool #13: Show and Tell
  
• Writing Tool #14: Interesting Names
  
• Writing Tool #15: Reveal Character Traits
  
• Writing Tool #16: Odd and Interesting Things
  
• Writing Tool #17: The Number of Elements
  
• Writing Tool #18: Internal Cliffhangers
  
• Writing Tool #19: Tune Your Voice
  
• Writing Tool #20: Narrative Opportunities
  
• Writing Tool #21: Quotes and Dialogue
  
• Writing Tool #22: Get Ready
  
• Writing Tool #23: Place Gold Coins Along the Path
  
• Writing Tool #24: Name the Big Parts
  
• Writing Tool #25: Repeat
  
• Writing Tool #26: Fear Not the Long Sentence
  
• Writing Tool #27: Riffing for Originality
  
• Writing Tool #28: Writing Cinematically
  
• Writing Tool #29: Report for Scenes
  
• Writing Tool #30: Write Endings to Lock the Box
  
• Writing Tool #31: Parallel Lines
  
• Writing Tool #32: Let It Flow
  
• Writing Tool #33: Rehearsal
  
• Writing Tool #34: Cut Big, Then Small
  
• Writing Tool #35: Use Punctuation
  
• Writing Tool #36: Write A Mission Statement for Your Story
  
• Writing Tool #37: Long Projects
  
• Writing Tool #38: Polish Your Jewels
  
• Writing Tool #39: The Voice of Verbs
  
• Writing Tool #40: The Broken Line
  
• Writing Tool #41: X-Ray Reading
  
• Writing Tool #42: Paragraphs
  
• Writing Tool #43: Self-criticism
  
• Writing Tool #44: Save String
  
• Writing Tool #45: Foreshadow
  
• Writing Tool #46: Storytellers, Start Your Engines
  
• Writing Tool #47: Collaboration
  
• Writing Tool #48: Create An Editing Support Group
  
• Writing Tool #49: Learn from Criticism
  
• Writing Tool #50: The Writing Process

All of these tools come various sections of Poynter Online which is a rich resource for journalists. If for some reason you want to see last year's post (for the comments perhaps), you can do so here.

You can also visit our previous post on Grammar and Punctuation Rules if you really want to sharpen your skills.

Good news! If you're running behind on your taxes, you can always file an extension.

Many of those with editors, however, say you can file an extention. And they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

You'll find dozens of botched references to extention on Google News. For the record, it's extension. Extention isn't a variant.

My only stand is on behalf of better writing. I take no sides in the debate over capital punishment, which gives rise to today's point.

Too often, articles on Google News say someone is to be executed by lethal injection or is sentenced to be put to death by lethal injection. In each case, lethal is redundant. An injection that kills is lethal to begin with.

This type of redundancy also shows up in references to past accidents and disasters: deadly tsunami that killed ...; deadly crash that killed ...; fatal crash that killed ...; fatal accident that killed ... As awful as these events are, there is no need to point out in the same sentence that something that kills also is deadly or fatal.

I am passively considering a career change. I'm passively pursuing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. I'm passively engaging others in debate about better writing.

What is it that possesses bureaucrats to say they are actively considering, actively pursuing, actively engaging? For example, the paper told me this week my governor is actively considering a tax on 401k plans.

Is this like a submarine movie in which the captain searches with active and passive sonar? Can the governor passively consider a tax hike and then—ping!—switch to active consideration?

Of course not. It's bureaucratic jargon, garbage that's invading our language. You consider or don't consider, engage or don't engage, pursue or don't pursue. It's redundant and silly to say actively before any of these. To illustrate, try saying passively, the antonym of actively, instead.

Don't blame the bureaucrats. They can't help it. But there's no excuse for this junk appearing in articles, most of them—surprise, surprise—about government.

Here are some examples from Google News: actively considering; actively pursuing; actively engaging.

"Worst of all is the kind of jargon employed as an obfuscating technique in bureaucratic or political contexts," Fowler's Modern English Usage says in its lengthy entry on jargon. "Genuine communication in such areas of life has never been more important in our inflammatory and dangerous times."

I'm actively considering sending the author a thank you letter.

It's called the wayward apostrophe, the superfluous apostrophe or the errant apostrophe. I call it the #@%*&$@ apostrophe. It's the erroneous use of an apostrophe in common plural words and in other contexts.

You've seen it: a carved sign declaring The Smith's live in the home; a scrawled banana's for sale; a menu listing fresh prawn's. Some usage guides call this a greengrocer's apostrophe, as it shows up so often in the produce section (orange's, grape's, apple's).

Fowler's Modern English Usage says it once was proper to use an apostrophe to create a plural when a noun ended in a vowel. Since the mid-1800s, it says, grammarians have condemned this. "But it continues to appear, to the amusement of educated people, in signs and notices," it says.

"Superfluous apostrophes are a symptom of unedited prose and of the inexperienced writer," The Cambridge Guide to English Usage says. "As applicationsof the apostrophe begin to shrink, expert writers and editors are also less certain about its use."

Garner's Modern American Usage notes the wayward apostrophe often finds its way into the word says. Google News turns up plenty of articles with say's.

"The only possible cure is increased literacy," Garner's says.