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Word of the Day: Fluvial

1/7/2013

Fluvial

\ˈflü-vē-əl\ adjective

1. of, relating to, or living in a stream or river.

2. produced by the action of a stream, "a fluvial plain."

Write and Polish was inspired to the Word of the Day by a journey along the Minnesota bank of the Mississippi River, enjoying the scenic fluvial panoramas, including that shown here. It contrasted with the pastoral terrain of much of the journey from Minneapolis to Milwaukee!

Though none of the Writers and Polishers took this picture (click on it to visit the website of the photographer), it very closely resembles what we enjoyed!

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Writing Tip: When to Use a Comma ~ it's more often than you think! (Part 1)

5/2/2012

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Insert commas between coordinate adjectives. That is, words that equally describe something.

If unsure, ask yourself if you can change the order of the adjectives without changing the meaning of the sentence. If so, they are coordinate, and should have commas between them.

Example № 1: The orchestra played a slow, beautiful, familiar tune.
Note that if one augmented the statement, like so: The orchestra played
a slow, beautiful, vaguely familiar tune -- "vaguely" is describing
(modifying) "familiar," so those two words stay together, undivided by a
comma.

Example № 2, one of the best insults ever written: "What kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things will you beget?" (The Lion in Winter, 1968 -- delivered by Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine to Peter O'Toole's King Henry II.)

Each of those delightfully biting adjectives equally describe "line of things," and the order is relatively unimportant (when rattling it off as a quote, we rarely get them in their actual order, nor the same arrangement twice). According to the test, commas go in between.

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Gold Star (Retroactive) to Director Joe Carnahan in NPR Interview

1/27/2012

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We initially commended Joe Carnahan for his use [invention?] of the adjective, "schmuck-y"in the course of discussing his new film, "The Grey."

He was indicating that the movie may be his response to being "perceived as this schmuck-y action director who doesn't have anything meaningful to say."

Nicely phrased, Joe! Thanks for upping the ante, both in film and in vocabulary!

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Commas or Hyphens: a Holiday Card Conundrum!

12/5/2011

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Holiday punctuation 9-1-1 received today: Oh, Guru of Grammar, I'm writing our holiday cards and I'm stumped. Should I use dashes or commas? "We've had a rockin'-awesome-crazy-wonderful-fantabulous-extraordinary-superb kind of year."

The answer in this example is to use commas. The dashes join a string of words or a whole phrase into a single word, for syntax/punctuation purposes. But you're just using a lot of modifiers as themselves...a string of modifiers. So, separate them with commas! The example I like to use is: She got that creepy, shivery, something's-under-the-bed feeling....

See how you have an example of both adjectives separated by commas and another set of words connected by hyphens to behave like another adjective in the list?

Note: Adjective = a word that describes (or modifies) a thing

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Best Grammar Instruction EVER: Schoolhouse Rock!

1/1/1990

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This post is dated as old as the system will go -- we had intended to back-date it all the way to the debut of the grammar series of Schoolhouse Rock!, back in 1973. Alas, the blog app does not recognize the legitimacy of this idea. Too bad!

Nonetheless, travel back with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when we lounged around the living room of a Saturday morning, consuming cartoons and ads for impossibly sugar-laden cereals -- and sang along to Schoolhouse Rock!

Through the magic of YouTube, you can sing along again, all about our friends, the Noun, Verb, Adjective and (sing it with us, "lolly, lolly, lolly, get your Adverbs here!")

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Word of the Day: Fluvial

Writing Tip: When to Use a Comma ~ it's more often than you think! (Part 1)

Gold Star (Retroactive) to Director Joe Carnahan in NPR Interview

Commas or Hyphens: a Holiday Card Conundrum!

Best Grammar Instruction EVER: Schoolhouse Rock!

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