by Donna | Jun 15, 2011
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| Image from kswptim.wordpress |
If you are an avid reader, and especially if you are an avid reader of British literature, you may find yourself being led astray in the whole “commas and periods inside or outside of ending quotation mark” quandary. Why? Because British usage is different than American usage when it comes to this little rule.
The first rule that we teach in our writing books about quotation marks is this: Commas and periods ALWAYS go inside the final quotation mark:
- She said, “Let’s go now.”
- “Let’s go now,” she said.
- He was reading the article, “Baby Geniuses.”
- He was reading the article, “Baby Geniuses,” and he lost track of time.
Regardless of the reason for the quotation mark use (i.e. for a quote in 1 and 2 above or to show a minor work {article title} in 3 and 4), the ending period and comma always go inside the final quotation mark in US usage.
The reason that you might see it differently could be that you are reading a British author. (British usage bases the placement of the comma and period inside or outside of the quotation mark on whether the period/comma is part of the quoted material, like US grammar does for question marks and exclamation marks.) Or, it could be an error—I see this error more often than any other one error.
So remember this for you American writers/students: Periods and commas ALWAYS go inside the final quotation mark—never on the outside, regardless of the use in the sentence.
by Donna | Jun 13, 2011
Today is my thirtieth wedding anniversary! Lots of well-wishes have been coming our way on FaceBook and in person–and I am in quite the celebratory mood! 🙂
Of course, any written words spark interesting discussions about grammar and usage (in my head at least!). And with my anniversary today and my birthday tomorrow, these greetings warrant a little “language lady” attention!
Obviously, happy, birthday, and anniversary are not proper nouns in themselves. However, when you write these as greetings, they should be capitalized.
Thus, you would capitalize
Happy Birthday!
Happy 39th Birthday! (LOL!)
Happy Anniversary!
Happy 30th Anniversary!
However, you would not capitalize these same words within a sentence when describing a birthday or anniversary: I had a happy anniversary. I enjoyed by day and had a happy birthday.
So…Happy Anniversary and Happy Birthday to me! 🙂 and Happy Flag Day (tomorrow!) to you!
by Donna | Jun 10, 2011
Now that we know how to spell the word Wednesday, we are going to add a new feature to Language Lady 365. If you desire to increase your vocabulary for professional or personal reasons; are preparing for standardized testing or college; or want to help your kids learn vocabulary better, you won’t want to miss Wordy Wednesdays! (Yesk I know it’s Thursday–I didn’t get this up last night!)
Wordy Wednesday will be a vocabulary-building day each week. Sometimes I will introduce a “word that everybody should know” type of word from test preparation or collections with these types of lists. Other times we will focus on prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Basically, all types of vocabulary learning—your weekly “shot” of wordsmith learning!
At the beginning of the year, I described the importance of roots and affixes in helping our children learn vocabulary: “Discussing words (roots, affixes, etc.) should be a part of our daily discussion with our kids. Even if our kids go to school, we have to look at ourselves as our children’s first teachers. There are so many things that we can teach them casually—homeschoolers or not.”
Not long ago in literature class, our son (Joshua, one of our TFT teachers) asked the students what words they knew that contained the prefix “pro,” meaning “for.” He got the usual answers—pro-life; prolific; pro-football, etc. And then his clever “little brother,” Josiah, said, “’Propane’—means that we are ‘for pain’!” Have fun with vocabulary building—and your kids will not forget it, for sure (nor will you)!
So today, we will start with a common root—a root that can help you unlock the meaning of many other words: gen.
GEN is a root meaning birth, race, or kind.
From this root, we get many common words that most of us are familiar with, including, but not limited to, the following list:
- Generous
- Generate
- Generation
- Genealogy
- Gender
- Genocide
- Generic
But roots are not limited to the beginnings of words—they are found buried within longer words as well. Consider the following words with gen somewhere in them. How does the meaning of gen—birth, race, or kind—fit into the meanings of these words:
1. Agency
2. Intelligence
3. Resurgent
4. Agenda
5. Allergen
6. Pathogen
7. Oxygen
8. Carcinogen
9. Divergent
10. Emergency
11. Degenerate
12. Negligence
13. Legends
14. Estrogen
15. Homogenate
16. Ingenuity
by Donna | Jun 9, 2011
So what can you do if you have difficulty spelling Wednesday? Try any of the methods above.
Or try our combination syllabication/tricky trick of syllabicating it AND pronouncing each syllable (including the “silent letters” of the word) as you write it:
Wed/nes/day
Be sure to pronounce it like the following sounds as you spell it (not the way it really sounds):
- Wed
- Nes (short e like ness)
- Day
Happy Wednesday!
by Donna | Jun 9, 2011
This will be the final installment of the links from last year about helping your child with reading during the summer. I pray that you and your son or daughter have an amazing summer building those reading skills and making memories!
Introducing readability levels: https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-175-summertime-beginning-reading.html
Readability levels—I of IV: https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-176-summertime-beginning-reading.html
Reading with your “already-reading” child to build fluency and keep skills fresh: https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/07/day-188-summertimereading-with-your.html
“What” to read with your child this summer: https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/07/day-189-summertimewhat-to-read-with.html
by Donna | Jun 9, 2011
So many of my students have trouble spelling today’s day of the week! Wednesday is definitely not phonetic, so students (and adults!) get stuck on the spelling of it. Most people say Wednesday without the sound of the d at all.
We teach our students to spell difficult words in many ways, giving them as many tools as we possibly can.
1. Syllable by syllable—longer words that are phonetic in nature can often be syllabicated and spelled syllable by syllable by a student who is fairly phonetically-savvy: con/se/quence.
2. Tricks and mnemonics—we call these “Tricky Tricks to Help It Stick” and use them often with our “Wacky Words”—words that have a wacky counterpart that can be confusing, such as the homophones their, there, and they’re. I had an elementary student this year who told the class that they could easily spell Nebuchadnezzar if they just divided it up and pronounced the ch as choo (not kuh): Neb/U/Chad/Nez/Zar! Of course, any tricks that help a person are handy tools to have (though the trick must help that person in order to be effective).
3. Visual tricks—many visual people spell by “seeing” the word—its shape, its sequence of letters (and the shapes those letters make), etc.
4. Memorization—some people are just naturally good spellers (it is now thought to be a specific skill set separate from intelligence) and can memorize a word’s spelling once it is seen.
More on “Wednesday” in the next post!
