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    No Mistakes Grammar
    No Mistakes Grammar
    No Mistakes Grammar
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    No Mistakes Grammar

    By Giacomo Giammatteo

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    Misused Words

    Have you ever said something and no sooner than it escapes your lips, you wonder—did I say that right? Did I use the right word?

    Chances are it was one of the 200 words covered in this book. I’m not saying it covers all the words, but it touches base with most of the more common culprits.

    Ever wonder if you should use ‘good’ or ‘well’? How about ‘lie’ or ‘lay’–that’s one that almost no one gets right.
    How about then and than, try to and try and, which and that, which and who.

    There are many that seem to stump people. Learn these words, and many more when you read this book. It’s designed to help you remember the proper word to use in each circumstance.

    And not just words, but sayings, odd punctuation, and even a few Latin expressions, such as e.g., ergo, etc., and i.e. (Did I just say ‘ergo’. If I do that again, smack me.) I know you think you are familiar with these, but despite their ubiquitousness (Smack me for that also.), there might be a few odd rules that pertain to using Latin expressions that you’re not familiar with. It’s worthwhile to learn them (especially if you intend to write).
    So, get your act together. Forget the coffee today and pick up a copy of Misused Words. You’ll be glad you did.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGiacomo Giammatteo
    Release dateSep 12, 2016
    ISBN9781940313139
    No Mistakes Grammar
    Author

    Giacomo Giammatteo

    Giacomo Giammatteo lives in Texas, where he and his wife run an animal sanctuary and take care of 41 loving rescues. By day, he works as a headhunter in the medical device industry, and at night, he writes.

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      Book preview

      No Mistakes Grammar - Giacomo Giammatteo

      The Words

      Misused Words

      Misusing words when you speak gives an impression that you probably don’t want to give.

      Misusing words when you write is even worse, because it’s permanent. Someone might forget what you said, but if it’s written, well…it’s there to refer to forever. With that thought in mind, let’s try to get it straight.

      Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to tell you how to write. I have a difficult enough time myself. When I send a manuscript to my editor, Annette, I get it back with more editing marks than you can imagine.

      So what is my goal? To see if I can help even one person improve their writing or speech enough for them to be happy with it. If I sell a few books in the process, my animals will be happy. (All proceeds go to the animals on my sanctuary.)

      I wrote this, and later I decided to split it into three books—one for the ordinary people, the ones who only want to see what they’re doing wrong, one for people who rely on words for business communication (and who need to get it right), and one for the maniacs—like me—who simply want to get things right for the sake of being right.

      Misused Words —which consists mostly of misused words and sayings (and a few redundancies)—the things you’d encounter in everyday life, covers almost 200 everyday misused words (187).

      The other book—Misused Words for Business—covers the same points (not the same words) as the first, but also includes sections on Absolutes (words that shouldn’t be modified) Business Redundancies, Capitalization, (a horrible misuse in business) Compound Modifiers, Mispronunciations, Punctuation, Sayings, and Times and Dates. It’s not a complete grammar book, but it does cover a lot of territory.

      The third book covers more redundancies, more absolutes, capitals, eponyms, flat adverbs, initialisms and acronyms, Latin phrases, a repeat of the mispronunciations (because it’s needed), plurals of compound words, and more.

      Let’s face it, the last thing you want anywhere—but especially in business writing—is to have the meaning of your words taken the wrong way. So, whether you write cover letters, resumes, business proposals, or only emails to colleagues, get the book and learn to do it right.

      It’s a sin, but if you read enough blogs, and you know what you’re looking for, you’ll see hundreds—if not thousands—of mistakes every week. I have even caught grievous errors on grammar sites.

      If you’re going to write about grammar, you should make all efforts to get it right. I would never think of correcting someone’s grammar in public, and yet one of the few TV shows I watch features a character who does just that. I wouldn’t object, except he makes grammar mistakes—obvious ones.

      My theory is that if you’re going to have a character correct grammar, he better damn well be free of grammar mistakes.

      Another note:

      I thought about using definitions from dictionaries, but half of them I couldn’t understand, so I tried to make my own definitions. I hope that worked out okay.

      In some cases, quotes of famous people were used. I got these from Brainy Quote, which can be found here. http://www.brainyquote.com

      Throughout the book I used icon as a symbol for a tip, or a way to remember how to tell the difference between words.

      icon (Dennis) is my pet wild boar. We rescued him when he was only a few days old, and he’s been with us for five years now. Of course, he’s a little bigger, weighing in at about 400 lbs.

      When we first got him, he was 12 lbs. In any case, I used an image of a wild boar to draw attention to a particular section/tip. I hope it will help you remember it.

      Misused Words

      In the ‘old days’ the written word was not only the preferred method of long-distance communicating, it was the only method. Marriages were arranged, business partnerships discussed, terms decided upon, and deals concluded. Heads of state negotiated treaties and settled territory disputes using ‘words.’

      Then came the telephone, and the airplane, and other forms of modern transportation and communication, and things changed. Emphasis shifted from the written word to the spoken word.

      Transportation made getting together in person much easier, and less expensive, and if that wasn’t possible the telephone sufficed as a backup. The result was that the written word faded into near obsolescence, and the generation that embraced this new technology couldn’t have been happier; grammar had never been more than a necessary evil anyways anyway.

      And then something strange happened. Technology advanced so rapidly that the planes and phones that had pushed writing and grammar into the background, and damn near buried them, were catalysts for bringing them back. Well at least one aspect of the technology.

      According to Mashable, there were about 145 billion emails per day being sent as of November 2012. That’s billion not million. No matter how you look at it, that’s a lot of email.

      Email single-handedly pushed writing back to the forefront of communication. Thanks to email, writing made a resurgence. The problem was it didn’t bring grammar with it.

      For some reason many people seem to think they don’t have to ‘write right’ when using email. They view it like a trip to the corner store late at night, when it’s okay to go wearing a T-shirt, or with your hair in curlers, or unshaven.

      Corner store aside, it is not okay to send your emails, or any other communication, out that way. Don’t do it—even if you’re sending a message to friends or family; it will get you into a habit of being sloppy. And trust me, you might think it’s okay. Your friends might think it’s okay. Even your colleagues might say it’s okay. But it’s not. And it never will be.

      Draft a sales proposal that has sloppy wording and your prospect will take notice. They’ll wonder if that same sloppiness will show up in your company’s products or customer service.

      Hit the ‘send’ button on an email with your resume attached, and the person evaluating it will notice a mistake—trust me. I have spoken to a lot of human resource people who told me that mistakes were one of the first things they looked at. In fact, I published a book—No Mistakes Resumes—that deals with that subject.

      I don’t blame you. I understand how difficult grammar is, and even worse, how boring it is if you aren’t interested in it. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn, or that you can’t learn.

      Don’t worry; I’m here to help.

      Vocabulary

      Depending upon which study you read, the average person has a vocabulary of somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 words. The writing vocabulary would be slightly less. Let’s assume for a minute that we’re talking the lower end of this—say 7,500 words. That’s still a lot of words to remember, or, to mix up. But this list I’m providing you is much shorter. It’s about 200 words (187), and these constitute the majority of the mixed up and misused words in every day everyday usage.

      So without further adieu ado, we’ll get started.

      Words:

      A/an:

      A mistake I often see is the misuse of the indefinite articles ‘a’ and ‘an.’ The rules are simple, yet people often get them confused.

      A—You use ‘a’ in front of a word beginning with a consonant sound, regardless of spelling. So, it would be: a fox, a dog, a university (the ‘u’ makes a ‘y’ sound), and yes, it would be a historic event. (Historic is

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