Grammar: Is It Changing Tack or Tact?

Whatever your character is doing isn’t working. Time to change tactics. There’s also a similar phrase—to change tack. But the two words—tack and tactic—are actually not related. Tacking is what sailors do with sails in order to take advantage of the wind. So when used idiomatically, the phrase means you (or your character) are adjusting […]

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Grammar: That vs. Which

Grammar: Commas with Relative Clauses That versus which perplexes a lot of people. First things first—let’s talk about restrictive versus nonrestrictive clauses. A relative clause is said to be restrictive if it provides information that is essential to the sentence. In these cases, that is the word you’ll want to use. Let’s take a look at some […]

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Grammar: Ellipses… How to Torture a Writer with Three Tiny Dots

Ellipses are such handy little guys, but sadly very misunderstood. Some common issues I see: Question: What’s the difference between an ellipsis and ellipses?Answer: This is the easy one–ellipses is plural, ellipsis is singular. 🙂 😆 Q: How the heck do you make an ellipsis, anyway?A: The correct answer (see below, and it’s important) is that it’s three dots, evenly […]

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