TexasDesign

Last month’s EWA prompted a number of complementary messages and a few suggestions for improvements.

Tom Schneider found two typographical errors. Particularly distressing to me is the fact that I covered both of them in an earlier issue on sound-alike words. Last month I wrote, “slight of hand” when I meant to write “sleight of hand.” I wrote, “assent” (meaning “to agree or concur”) when I meant to write “ascent” (”upward movement”). I don’t think I will make either error again; regardless, my mistakes illustrate the formidable challenges of attempting even minimal mastery of our language.

Tom also pointed out that I had talked about grammar in the introduction of last month’s piece yet had discussed a point of punctuation in the EWA itself. I had always thought punctuation is a subset of grammar, but that is not so. Grammar relates to a system underlying the structure of a language. Punctuation refers to the various marks we use when writing to make the meaning clear. Who knew? Now we know.