Fall into the correct grammar patterns!

November is a month to give thanks to loved ones, health and happiness. Reading and writing are two of my favorite pastimes (both at home and in the office), so I decided to make a list of my Grammar Pet Peeves with easy-to-remember rules to cure the bad copywriting bug that’s been going around lately. 

(Please note: a few I already mentioned on the Blue Tide Productions Blog, but thought they were important enough to reiterate.)

1. Review your sentences and remove the word “that.” In most cases, your sentences still make sense without that word. The more you can condense your sentences and tighten up copy, the better.

2.   Finally, an easy way to remember they’re, their, and there!:

They are = they’re. Think of it as a drunken slur, you are just running the words together quickly.

So clearly, their = the “other” one, used for possessive. Easy to remember because an “heir” gets stuff. It just has a T in front of it.

And lastly, “there” indicates a location or destination. Also easy to remember because it is like the word “here” (another location/destination) with a T in front of it.

I.e. They’re going to pick up their car from there.

3. Capitalization versus little letters? Depending on the type of site and copy you are crafting, capitalization comes into play in a big way.

The Big Game. A powerful title, needing all caps.

That’s what SHE said. (Self explanatory.)

Eenie,meenie, miney mo…I may choose not to capitalize any of this sentence if I think the viewer will get the ambiguous feeling better without them. Read more…