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Exactly what it seems
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Last week's quiz question might have seemed confusing because of the lesson that preceded it about subject-verb agreement, but most of you got it right. "Neither" usually takes singular verbs, and even though "of the options" is right next to the verb, it doesn't affect the verb since it's a prepositional phrase. What writing challenges trip you up? Remember that we're happy to tackle them in this newsletter. Submit your questions here. In the meantime, here's this week's quiz:
You told us a while back that you love the addition of the quiz to this newsletter. Your feedback is part of the reason we've kept it going for so long. What else do you think we should change? Tell us here. ❤ Team Stylebot
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Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.
Today is the longest day of the year, and we can't write much more about it without revealing the answer to last week's quiz, so let's get right to it. The quiz was part vocabulary, part capitalization. We asked you to fill in the blank in this sentence: "They’re planning a party on the _______ to mark the longest day of the year." First, you had to recognize that the event marking the start of both summer and winter is a solstice, not an equinox, which marks the start of spring and fall....
Happy Friday...the 13th. Most of you got the right answer on last week's quiz. Just as you spell out one through nine and use numerals for 10 and higher, you do the same for ordinals. So this month we have Friday the 13th, and next month we'll have July Fourth. You got a peek at our Google Docs extension last week, and this week we're excited to share another great review: "Style Guide Checker is a great product that provides a second set of eyes to catch things that often go overlooked. Not...
Whether you use "kitty" or "catty" before "corner" to describe something that is diagonally opposite, you're not talking about cats. In fact, the origin of "kitty-corner" is more closely related to dice 🎲 🎲 That wasn't an option on last week's quiz, and we didn't trick you by giving you the option to pick "cats." Most of you guessed "diagonal," and while that is part of the word's meaning now, the origin of "kitty-corner" goes back to the French word meaning "four." English speakers adapted...