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“Like” as Slang

By Judy Vorfeld Let’s tackle the some­times loved, some­times hated word, “like.” Like, have you won­dered if there’s a tech­ni­cal term for, like, stick­ing the word “like” like, through­out a sen­tence, like, like this? Here’s the grip­ping answer: it’s an inter­jec­tional word. Interjectional speech is often called “slang.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, […]

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Different Than or Different From?

By Judy Vorfeld If you’re con­fused about “dif­fer­ent than” vs. “dif­fer­ent from,” here’s a quick way to rest your mind: Different from: This prod­uct is dif­fer­ent from the one I nor­mally use. Different than: I see the issue in a dif­fer­ent way than you do. (Although “from” is nor­mally pre­ferred, “than” is acceptable […]

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Wordle on Editing and Writing

By Judy Vorfeld My good friend and col­league Terence Kierans pointed me in the direc­tion of Wordle. It looked inter­est­ing. After I down­loaded Java, I was able to go in and play around. This is what I came up with:

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How Do I Punctuate Et Al?

By Judy Vorfeld If you do much read­ing, or are in cer­tain pro­fes­sions, you not only come across the expres­sion et al., but know what it means. Et al. used to be used just in the U.S. in legal doc­u­ments, but for many years it’s been used […]

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Continuous vs. Continual

By Judy Vorfeld CONTINUOUS (unin­ter­rupted) “Continuous” refers some­thing hap­pen­ing with­out inter­rup­tion. Examples: Living near the free­way means lis­ten­ing to con­tin­u­ous road noise from dawn to dusk…I sat watch­ing the con­tin­u­ous flow of water spilling from the top of Multnomah Falls. CONTINUAL (hap­pen­ing again and again) “Continual” suggests […]

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