Tuesday, January 5, 2010

What Works

After so many posts about what doesn't work, it's time to have some posts about what does work, and why. Eventually I'll find a well-written article on the 'net and post the link. I do
know of one very well-written article--a superb comparison/contrast article about EastEnders that appeared in Vanity Fair in the early '90s, but that was so long ago that it's not even in their online archives (yes, I checked . . . just in case).

Here's a sentence with correct punctuation: "After all, Alfred ruled in the late 800s and then only in Wessex, a southern English kindom centred on Winchester."

There aren't any problems in the above sentence. A comma follows the introductory phrase, and a comma precedes the explanatory clause. The only thing different is the spelling of centred, and that only because this sentence is from an article in a magazine about Britain.

More positive examples tomorrow.

Note

Hargan, Jim. "The England That Alfred Made." British Heritage (September 2004): 36.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Hyphens

"Choose from a delicious Italian, Mediterranean, and Tex-Mex dishes, hot and crusty oven baked pizza, sizzling steaks, and, of course, expertly prepared Gulf Coast seafood."

Sometimes a hyphen is needed . . . as in the case of "oven baked pizza," in which two words are paired to describe what sort of pizza: Choose from a delicious Italian, Mediterranean, and Tex-Mex dishes, hot and crusty oven-baked pizza, sizzling steaks, and, of course, expertly prepared Gulf Coast seafood.


"Explore more than 25-acres of lush indoor and outdoor gardens."

And sometimes a hyphen is not needed, as in the case of "25-acres" because the information tells us how many acres of gardens there are, rather than describing particular gardens, and so the corrected sentence reads Explore more than 25 acres of lush indoor and outdoor gardens.