Richard

When writers are trying to impress, a tendency they often have is to use long and obscure words. You might see penmen trying to dazzle readers with words like ‘crepuscular’, ‘pulchritudinous’, ‘quaquaversal’, ‘verisimilitude’ and ‘iconoclastic’. This is all well and good and there’s certainly a place for grandiose language, but are you confusing your writers […]

Today is Friday the 13th, a day connected with horror, fear and misfortune, and nothing sends a shiver down a writer or grammarian’s spine like bad spelling. Tools like autocorrect have made the gift of learning how to spell less valuable, and spelling errors harder to make, but they remain common in online forums, chat […]

With autumn now well in motion, it’s a beautiful time of year to head outside with your four-legged friend to take in the brisk air, dim evenings and scattered, brown leaves. However, many dog owners have reservations, with two common seasonal sights being a particular concern. Start a Google search with the words “are conkers” […]

For as long as the exam process has existed, people have always tried to find ways to give themselves the upper hand by not exactly following the concept of ‘exam conditions’. Loopholes in the rules are exploited just as much in real life as in the exam room. You might remember the case of the

Where would we be without the ability to ask questions? Whether rhetorical (like that one) or specific requests for information or responses, we would be a very boring and ignorant species if we never questioned anything. When talking, we can use intonation to make it clear that what we’re saying is a question. In writing, […]

Dog owners know that their pets are fantastic, but as humans, we often forget that even though we are the most developed of all creatures, there are plenty of things we can’t do as well as other animals. Here are just four areas where dogs leave us completely barking up the wrong

The thought of exams probably reminds you of commonly uttered phrases like “turn over your paper”, “pens down” and “neat crossing out”, but in an era where we use computers and digital devices every day, why are we still taking pen and paper exams? Currently, the University of Cambridge is considering making a move from […]

For whatever reason, the spelling bee has never quite taken off on these shores. While Americans seem to lap it up, precocious children spelling obscure words out loud is something that doesn’t seem to appeal to British audiences. Those who have never watched a spelling bee may not realise that competitors are not simply given […]

Speaking to your dog is natural – any owner will tell you that unloading the grumbles of the day onto a pair of furry ears can help – but one expert thinks that talking too much can ruin his training program. Glenn Redmond, a dog trainer, has said that many owners are the source of […]

The internet is littered with statistics on the cost of acquiring new customers and clients as opposed to retaining existing ones, with some sources claiming the former can cost up to 25 times more than the latter. The exact figure is clearly debatable and may even vary from one sector to the next, but there’s […]

Words that are pronounced the same way but have different meanings are known as ‘homophones’. Often, as well as sounding the same, they are

Writing can be a lot like building a house or cooking a meal. Once you’re some way into the task, it’s not too difficult to add to it, but it can be hard to get going if there’s literally nothing in front of you. ‘Blank page syndrome’ is the name given for the struggle many […]

As most of us now have an electronic notepad in our pockets, it means we can write while we travel on a train, wait for a bus or sit in a waiting room at the dentist, allowing us to use time that would otherwise have been wasted in a productive way. It’s not exactly a […]

Trolling and cyberbullying are irritating and potentially harmful habits, and the people that engage in it tend to be those that wouldn’t say boo to a goose if they didn’t have the protection of their computer or mobile phone screen in front of them, but what happens when they’re actually confronted about what they’ve done? […]

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are packed with people trying to ridicule other individuals and make their lives a misery, but why do they do it? What are they gaining from it? Bullying, of course, is

The advert of word processing has made it easy for us to complete written work in dribs and drabs, often jumping onto the next paragraph without finishing the first one. This is in stark contrast to the older days of typewriters and traditional print, where work would have to be churned through in strict order […]

Thanks to internet access and businesses beginning to appreciate the advantages of flexibility, more and more people are using their own home as their workplace. The most recent Office for National Statistics figures are from 2015 and show that nearly one in seven (13.7%) Brits now work from home. Those confined to a remote office […]

As we all have work, family and social commitments, the amount of time dog owners are able to spend with their beloved pooches is not always as much as they would like. If this sounds like a position you find yourself in, have you considered taking your dog to work? Today is Bring Your Dog […]

Even the most proficient writers have the occasional word they just can’t remember how to put together. Perhaps you’re always tempted to put an ‘a’ somewhere in the word ‘sentence’, or maybe you find yourself reciting ‘I before E, except after C’ to yourself before wrongly spelling words like ‘weird’, ‘weight’ and ‘leisure’. The state […]

Despite being the largest country on the planet, as well as one of the most powerful, most of us know little about Russia and particularly its language. While we may remember some French, German or Spanish from school, Russian, with its 33-character Cyrillic alphabet, is a lot more alien to the majority of Brits. This […]

There are some food and drink items that are well known to be bad for dogs. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that giving alcohol to a dog is a very bad idea, and most dog owners are well aware of the dangers of feeding them chocolate. In modern times though, when we […]

With new and inexperienced writers, one of the most common mistakes they make is displaying a lack of structure in how they write. When we talk, we often jump back and forth in what we’re saying, perhaps referring back to an idea from earlier in the discussion. In writing, we need to be a lot

If you want to write for a living, or even as a hobby, one thing you have to get to grips with is the alphabet. You only have 26 letters to use to form your work, so here are 26 tips – one beginning with each of them – on how to make your writing […]

Of all the gripes that grammarians have, it’s often the smallest and seemingly most innocuous that annoy them the most. Apostrophes and their correct use is one matter that keeps many sticklers for grammar awake at night. This is literally the case for the so-called ‘Grammar Vigilante’, a mystery night-time activist who seems to have