Blog #5, Great Grammar Website by Julie White

Who knew that something so useful and handy could be a click away. The other day I discovered grammar girl, from quickanddirtytips.com. This website professes to be "your friendly guide to the world of grammar, punctuation, usage, and fun developments in the English language." According to Wikipedia, Mignon Forgarty, is “a professor of journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a former science writer who produces an educational podcast titled Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, which promotes the proper use of the English language and … is also the founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcasting network.”

Last week she posted a blog on the rule of “Quotation Marks with Commas and Periods”. What a crazy coincidence. This is going to be on the test next week.

She said, “In short, my U.S.-centric memory trick is to remember that inside the U.S., periods and commas go inside quotation marks.



In American English, periods and commas always go inside the closing quotation mark; semicolons, colons, asterisks, and dashes always go outside the closing quotation mark; and question marks and exclamation points require that you analyze the sentence and make a decision based on context.” 

The editing mistake that I found is my mistake. I posted notes from our test review yesterday on the discussion board. When I reviewed it later, I cringed. Apparently, I still need more practice using grammar. I said, “If a sentence starts with the words, 'None of them...' its plural. If it says, 'Not one...' it's singular. I should know better by now. Both its are it's.