Man Made DIY

I'm the sort of guy who likes to learn to do things well.  If I make a cut on the table saw, I want it to be the best cut. If I set out to create a tasty meal, I want to do my best knife work, get the crustiest sear and the perfect seasoning. You call it obsessive perfectionism, I call it trying my best. Same same.

And I write and edit for a living, so I wanna use the English language as best as possible. (Yes, I started that particularly vulnerable sentence with and and used the colloquialism wanna.) So, I tend to love the various grammar geek posts and misused words infographics about the blogosphere, especially when there's new stuff to learn.

And this, my friends, is an especially good one. If you know all these tricks to proper comma usage, particularly that trickster identifier-name syntax,… read more

My friend Tim has just completed a first draft manuscript of a book, and I'm reading it to provide initial feedback. The content is great, but we definitely disagree on a stylistic difference: the Oxford comma. You know, that last one before the and in a series. He says it's outdated, but I'm all for it. Though its usefulness was debated this summer, it's still here to stay. And here's… read more