by Mayv 'SpearBourne' Amaia

Created on: March 20, 2010   Last Updated: September 17, 2011

Improving grammar skills is surprisingly easy. I say surprising due to the apparent decline in these skills in the fairly recent past.

With the advent of electronic mail, or e-mail, and text messages, it seems that many are forgetting how to spell words correctly, are either over- or under-using punctuation, and are using homophones, or words that sound similar when spoken, interchangeably.

The issue of proper spelling becomes a tricky one when variations of one word can all be considered correct. Take for example, grey and gray, colour and color, and doughnut and donut.

This becomes further complicated when a typographical error like "teh" becomes so common that it rapidly becomes an acceptable variation, in this case, of the word "the." Words and/or spellings, such as this, can become so prevalent that they are soon added to the dictionaries of spell checkers.

I like to keep a paperback dictionary and thesaurus handy so I can make sure I am saying what I really mean.

Punctuation is another problem I have noticed. Sometimes, commas are inserted in strange places or are absent altogether.

Remember, a comma belongs where an independent or dependent clause causes a slight pause in speech or separates items in a list; a period goes at the end of a sentence or abbreviation. A comma also separates the two parts of a compound sentence when used in front of or, and, or but.

Compare the following sentences:

I like, bubble baths, puppies, and, reading novels.

I like bubble baths, puppies, and reading novels.

Reading each aloud, with a brief pause at each comma, which makes more sense? If you have paid attention to the above explanation, it is clear that the second sentence is properly punctuated.

For longer lists which contain shorter lists within them, a semi-colon ( ; ) can be used to separate each group from the others. A colon ( : ) may also be appropriate before enumerating such a listing.

An example of this would be:

My hobbies are quite varied and include: gardening, landscaping, and tending to my orchard; reading historical fiction, biographies, and epic novels; and cooking, baking, and experimenting with new recipes.

Apostrophes often denote possession, or a contraction, and are not used to indicate that a noun is plural.

For example, "Jeffrey's skates" is used to indicate that the skates belong to Jeffrey; on the other hand, "The Jeffreys are coming for dinner" means that more than one person with the name Jeffrey, or a family with that surname, is coming for dinner.

An exception

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