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Monday’s total eclipse
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Parts of the United States will experience a total solar eclipse on Monday. That means the moon will be between the sun and the Earth for a brief period. It’s a rare event that won’t be visible again in the U.S. until 2044. Much less rare is inconsistent capitalization for the entities involved in this phenomenon. You often see “sun” and “moon” capitalized, even though they don’t need to be. But what about Earth? That’s a different story. Longtime subscribers might remember that we covered that one last year ahead of Earth Day. You should capitalize “Earth” when you’re referring to the planet, which is why you see us capitalizing it in references to the solar eclipse. But you don’t capitalize it in common phrases, such as, “Why on earth would I do that?” Where on Earth do you plan to be for the solar eclipse? Hit reply and let us know. ❤ 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.
Happy Halloween! We definitely didn't scare you off with last week's quiz. In fact, more of you answered than usual, and more than half of you got it right: Here's how we would write the sentence: In this day and age, it's hard to tell whose data is secure. So we count three total errors that we put into two buckets: Contractions and possessive pronouns: Possessive pronouns can be tricky because we're so used to using apostrophes for possessives. But possessive pronouns (its, hers, theirs,...
Well, we failed to wreak havoc with last week's quiz 🙃 Despite the fact that the phrase is sometimes written as "wreck havoc," 80% of you got the right answer. "Wreck havoc" is an understandable mistake, because both "wreck" and "havoc" mean "destruction." But, using that logic with the verb "wreck," which means "to damage," "wreck havoc" means to damage destruction. "Wreak," meanwhile, means "to bring about," hence "wreak havoc." You didn't need the bonus points, but some of you replied to...
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