My name is Justice, or J as they call me, and I right now, I am sitting all alone under a cherry blossom tree, thinking of my younger brother Methushael. What had happened this morning totally changed my perception toward my younger brother. He left three months ago, and I do not know I ever... Continue Reading →
Getting to Know Sentence Structures
Back when I was in the ESL career, I taught technical and creative writing to some of the advance students we had. One of the basic topics I covered is the sentence structure (or types of sentences). I usually give at least a week to discuss all the elements of a sentence with my students—that... Continue Reading →
Building Your Vocabulary
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. —Mark Twain Often times, we find ourselves groping for the right words to describe somebody or something, be it abstract or concrete. Unlike Shakespeare, we do not have the authority to coin new words to... Continue Reading →
Things You Need to Know about Adjectives
An adjective is a word, a phrase, or a clause that modifies (describes) a noun or a noun equivalent. Its main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase and more information about the object signified. Form An adjective can be a word, a phrase, or a clause. Kirby is an... Continue Reading →
An Analysis of Robert Frost’s “The Figure a Poem Makes”
Summary Robert Frost’s essay “The Figure a Poem Makes” talks about his own perception of how poem should be and how people should view poem. He mentions that all poems should be distinct from one another and should have wisdom that the readers can benefit from, not only to entertain them. The poem should also... Continue Reading →
Common Sentence Structure Errors and How to Fix Them
Composing a sentence does not seem to be a hard task. Well, that may be in spoken language. Errors in sentence construction are hardly noticeable in a spoken conversation since we do not see the punctuation, capitalization, pattern, spelling, etc. But in writing, it is a totally different story. In writing, we see more than... Continue Reading →
Hyphens and Dashes: Their Difference and Uses
A dash is a dash is a dash. And hyphens and dashes are one and the same (cliché there). Right? Wrong. Unless you’ve done some proofreading or have had some experience with publishing, you probably wouldn’t have heard of em and en dashes (its not-so-popular sibling). After all, if a hyphen would suffice, why use... Continue Reading →
A Writer’s Dilemma
Q. When referring to a zombie, should I use the relative pronoun who (which would refer to a person) or that (since, technically, the zombie is no longer living)? Essentially, does a zombie cease to become a “person” in the grammatical sense? A. Let’s assume this is a serious question, in which case you, as the writer,... Continue Reading →
“If I Will Be a Girl . . . ” Is Just Wrong
“If I will be a girl, I think I will be a slut.” Okay. So the sentence above is wrong in so many levels, especially in grammatical sense. The sentence above is an example of a conditional. Conditionals are sentences expressing factual implications or hypothetical situations and their consequences. They are so called because the... Continue Reading →
A Blog Response to Military Bride’s Grammar Post
It hasn’t been long since I started writing grammar posts, but I have been studying grammar since 2006, and I have even taught basic, intermediate, and advance grammar both in ESL and university settings. I am not saying that I have mastered grammar; I still make occasional mistakes. But I am quite confident to make... Continue Reading →
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