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Latest blog posts from One Step Forward

My 300-Posts Review
I thought I should recognize my 300th post (since I completely missed number 250) by talking about what has been successful and interesting about the blog, from my point of view. I'm going to do one of those self-congratulatory posts, in other words, so if you don't want to find out my most...
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Published 2 days ago

Punny Business: I Couldn't Resist
Normally, I write my own material, but I couldn't resist posting this groaner list of puns.The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.She...
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Published a week ago

Bad English Grammar from around the World
Some days, I get so interested in reading the rants of others that I forget to write my own. Today is one of those days. I'd like to share some of those rants with you, both because they relate to grammar and because I like to demonstrate that I'm not the only one who has strong feelings about...
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Published a week ago

Help with Diagramming Sentences
I've long harbored the idea of including complicated sentence diagrams on One Step Forward, but I've come to accept that I have neither the space nor the graphics skills to make them worth our collective while. I firmly believe that diagramming sentences gives people insight into how language...
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Published 2 weeks ago

A Toney Topic for Today
I've always found the adjective "toney" to be a mite pretentious, which fits my plebeian lifestyle. I never gave it much thought, however, until I recently read a sentence regarding a "tony" club. Being me, I got to thinking about the word itself. Toney, or the more-common tony, simply...
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Published 3 weeks ago

Are You Onto Something?
Many of my questions come from my reading, when I see usage that I know should never have made it past an editor or phrases that I think have been used incorrectly. Recently, an author used the phrase "he was onto something" several times, and I found myself unable to decide whether he should...
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Published a month ago

Risible and Derisive
I ran across the word "risible" in a book, recently, and immediately thought of "derisive". Specifically, I wondered if something that you found risible would generate derisive laughter, and using both words in a sentence would make it redundant. That, of course, meant that I needed to research...
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Published a month ago

Hey, Apple! Funnest Is Not a Word
I've posted before concerning my dislike for inventive spelling in company names or who can't spell the name of their product. I've even ranted about badly-written advertisements. Apple manages to offend under both of the latter two categories. They can offer no earthly reason for the...
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Published 2 months ago

What Is a Sentence, Anyway?
In all of the months I've blathered on about grammar basics and writing, not once have I dedicated a whole post to deciding whether your sentences actually are. I've certainly mentioned in passing the criteria, but I thought it about time to specify the requirements in one place. A sentence...
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Published 2 months ago

A Parts of Speech Round-Up
While I've written plenty about the various parts of speech, I'd not thought to specify a list of them. Recently, however, I've noticed that a fair amount of you folks have wandered by in search of information about one or more of those topics. In order to facilitate your finding those posts, I...
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Published 2 months ago

Word Tidbits: Enunciate or Annunciate
While not a commonly-used word, annunciate can be easily confused with enunciate. In truth, I'd never heard the word until a co-worker did actually confuse the two. Naturally, I researched it. Enunciate comes from the Latin root word, nuntius, meaning messenger. The prefix "ex" was added and...
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Published 2 months ago

More Avoidable Errors
The time has again arrived for some real-world examples of avoidable errors that I discovered in on-line articles. Please enjoy these examples of various writers' inattention to their work. Consider them reminders of why proofreading matters. "Also, it is non-polluting and environment...
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Published 2 months ago