Tag Archives: grammar

Getting its and it's right

By Joe Brockmeier | Published: 11/24/2009
If I had a penny for every time someone confuses its and it's, just on the Internet, I would be ridiculously rich. This is probably, in part, because the rule is a bit counterintuitive. The reflex for most writers is to affix an 's to something to make it possessive. You'd normally say something like [...]
Posted in Writing, openSUSE | Also tagged , | 4 Comments

False arrest by the language police: Use of comprise?

By Joe Brockmeier | Published: 11/23/2009
The term "language police" has been around as long as I can remember, but I've never heard the phrase "false arrest by the language police" before. Love it. Caught the reference on this discussion about the proper usage of comprise. So-called language police will often correct use of "comprise" to mean "made up of"  when the [...]
Posted in Writing, openSUSE | Also tagged , | 5 Comments

Then vs. than

By Joe Brockmeier | Published: 11/22/2009
Most people, especially writers, have language pet peeves. I probably have more than most. The top of my list, though, is when people misuse "then" as a substitute for "than." Examples: "I like GNOME more then KDE." "when a file is zipped for more then X times" Both are incorrect. They should be using "than," not "then". For some [...]
Posted in Rant, Writing | Also tagged , | 5 Comments

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