Plus One

Joe, my boss at Tiny Community College, called this afternoon and left a message on my machine.
He’s caught in the throes of trying to figure out next term’s schedule, and he warned me earlier this week, when he gave me the schedule for the two classes that he wanted me to take, that nothing’s settled [...]

Grammar Wednesday, Week Two!

Affect and effect seem to be problem words for a lot of my readers, so that will be the subject of the second Grammar Wednesday!
Affect* is a verb, and can have a couple of different meanings. The least common use of the two meanings is “to pretend or assume (as in, “take on”).
“I affect [...]

“They LIKE Me! Right Now, They LIKE Me!”

Does anyone else remember Sally Field’s 1985 Oscar acceptance speech?
I remember her being ridiculed for it, but I’ve got to tell you here that I think I know how she felt. There is a rush to being accepted for the work that you do, for receiving acknowlegement that you do it well, and for [...]

Required Reading

I have a special place in my heart for Martin Luther King Jr.
He and I share a birthday and, even though he was assassinated before I was born, I’ve always felt close to the man. I’ve written here before that I have a particular interest in human struggles for equality and respect. Brother [...]

The Writer’s Life

The other day, I was driving home from a shopping trip with Organic Mama, when we started talking about language. We’re English teachers, the two of us, and putting us in one place for longer than, oh, ten minutes usually results in some sort of conversation about language, so this, in itself, isn’t really [...]

What Would You Do?

So, I sent an email to my students about the assignment that’s due for Monday. It went like this:
In order to get an A on this assignment, the following criteria must be met:
-you must have some sort of preliminary outline. It doesn’t have to follow strict outline form, but it must give [...]

MPAA Rating

Husband and I were settling in to watch a video the other night – Mission Impossible III, which I wanted to see for its own sake long before Tom Cruise opened his mouth and proved to the world what a moron he is – when the MPAA rating screen came up:
[...]

Reason Number 2

I spent yesterday with Wayfarer and Sooza and their daughters. Sooza’s parents live in my general area (read: the same area code), so they pack up the girls for Thanksgiving and Christmas and head up this way. On the third Wednesday of November, we meet at a commuter train station to take [...]

Grammar Wednesday!!!

This post marks the first Grammar Wednesday! Thank you to all of you who encouraged this idea – and thanks to Blue for coming up with it!

Today, we’re going to clear up the question of then vs. than. SassieCassie mentioned it as a question she had, and I see it misused ALL the [...]

The Just Don’t Get It…..

My public speaking class seems to be falling apart at the seams.
Yesterday’s class was a bit of a challenge. Of the thirteen students still taking the class, only eight showed up. Of those eight, only four were prepared to give the speech that was due for that class. One student got an [...]