Punctuation: A nineteenth century verse
I found this short poem in our English Workbook. It’s elegant. More importantly, it teaches us the usage of each punctuation mark, by demonstrating in the poem itself.
Sentences start with a Capital letter,
So as to make your sentences better.
Use a full stop to mark the end.
The comma is for short pauses and breaks,
And also for lists the writer makes.
Dashes —like these —are for thoughts by the way.
They give extra information (so do brackets, we may say).
These two dots are a colon: colons pause to compare.
They also do this: list, explain and prepare.
The semicolon makes a break; it’s followed by a clause.
It does the work of words that link; it’s also a short pause.
An apostrophe shows the owner of anyone’s things,
And it’s also useful for shortenings.
I’m so glad! He’s so mad! We’re having such a lark!
To show strong feelings use an exclamation mark!
A question mark follows What? When? Where? Why? and How?
Do you? Can I? Shall we? Give us your answer now!
‘Quotation marks’ enclose what is said,
Which is why they’re sometimes called ‘speech marks’ instead.
Print blog posts
We read “words” but many of the blogs act as if they want us to savour their “graphic wonder”. Yes, we enjoy graphic wonders along with good content. When it comes to printing text that is placed amidst a graphic wonder, things get annoying. Because, we want to print the content, not the graphics. Some parts of the page we do not like to see in our print-out include:
- Ads
- Site navigation, comments
- Images (sometimes)
- Irritating fonts and backgrounds
So, how to get readable print outs? Here is a simple solution:
- Go to the page you want to print.
- Copy its URL (the link shown in the browser address bar).
- Head over to http://www.printfriendly.com/
- Paste your link in the big text box, click “print preview”.
- Delete any parts you want to get rid of.
- Tick “no-images” if you do not want images.
- Click “Print”.
- If you liked the service, then, in their homepage, they offer a bookmarklet. Install it, and you can print any web page using printfriendly, with a push of a button..
Online English dictionaries
English is such a big language. It has more words than any other language. So, in-spite of using it for years, it becomes necessary for me to refer to a dictionary while writing. We are in the digital age, so we use digital dictionaries. I like the following online dictionaries.
Comprehensive dictionaries:
A Slang dictionary written by the community. So funny, it is :D
A very fast dictionary:
