Grammar lessons you’ll actually enjoy.

Now that many of us are communicating mostly via email and chat as we work from home, the Crowley Webb proofreading department thought it might be helpful to offer tips and tricks to ensure we’re all using the best grammar possible in both internal and external messages.

We know the English language is always evolving, and we do our best to stay informed of trends, updates, corrections, and even just common usage. So each week, we create a company-wide “Grammar Hammer Time” email covering various topics, including punctuation, parts of speech, and commonly misused or misspelled words. We also take requests, because who hasn’t secretly wanted (or needed) a thorough yet humorous explanation of the difference between “affect” and “effect”?

We hope you find these weekly tidbits helpful!

 

Today’s grammar tip: Weird plurals to watch for.

While adding an s to the end of most nouns works to make them plural, sometimes that s goes elsewhere. Check out these funky plurals and commit them to memory so you can impress your relatives or trivia teammates:

• Sisters-in-law
• Attorneys general
• Culs-de-sac
• Passersby
• Calls to action

That last one is most applicable to our daily work lives here at Crowley Webb, but the others have probably come up at one point or another! Like when you’re talking to your brothers-in-law about the two former surgeons general who just moved in three culs-de-sac over from you, and you don’t want to creep but you’re thinking of taking your kids over just to be passersby and see what their house looks like.