aprilgem's blog

Facebook allows members to tell friends their latest news through “status” messages, and until recently a status message always began with: [Your name] is… Exhibit A: April is checking her e-mail. April is updating her status message. April is teaching herself to knit and rediscovering what it is to feel retarded. April is wishing she didn’t have to work with the word “is” so much. April is the fourth month of the year. April is not. Is too. Is not!…

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In my first week at an old day job, I got my first All Employees e-mail while my creative director was setting up my computer. The e-mail was from an unhappy soul in sales, whose lunch was taken from the company fridge: Whoever took my packed lunch, I hope you enjoyed it. I have to go hungry now. Thanks! Aside from reminding myself to keep my lunchbox at my desk, I didn’t take much notice of the e-mail, until a…

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This one’s a biggie. It seems like everyone in the world and their mother get this wrong, and by this, I mean the difference between the three verbs to lie, to lie, and to lay. Turaluralu. First, we have the verb to lie, meaning to tell an untruth. Of the three verbs, this one is the least misused, as most people know how to conjugate it—and why not? It’s very straightforward. Today, I lie. You lie. He lies. We lie….

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I have more than one pet peeve about writing. The misuse of the words peaked, peeked, and piqued is one of them. Other than the fact that they are homophones, I don’t understand why perfectly capable writers and editors miss these every now and then. Peaked …is the past tense of the verb to peak. The noun version of the word looks like this: or like this: The use of the verb version of the word, which means to reach…

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Question asked by someone in a writing group: Advice needed: When I’m writing and am called to describe a series of actions on behalf of a character, all the while trying to keep the fluency of the story by not using redundancy, I’m faced with a problem. If I’m writing out a series of actions that a character carries out, its virtually impossible not to use the words “he/she, his/her, character’s name” over and over again. The question is this:…

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