I love my parents Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty

What?!!

Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty my parents?!

There you are! I missed the comma 😉

The Oxford Comma or the serial comma is a comma placed before a coordinating conjunction. The statement in the blog title can be written as:

I love my parents, Lady Gaga, and Humpty Dumpty.

In the above statement, the comma which comes just before ‘and’ is the serial comma.

This saves the reader from misunderstanding the statement and the writer, from the embarrassment 🙂

Heard that some style guides even mandate the use of serial comma!

Next time you pen down your thoughts, don’t forget the Oxford Comma 🙂

Source: Grammarly blog

How ‘plain’ is your English?

Plain English Campaign says, “Since 1979, we have been campaigning against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information.” More often than not, people are baffled by the use of complicated english. To help communicate in simple and plain english, Plain English Campaign began in 1979 and since then, it has been helping thousands of people and organizations around the world to ensure their public information is as simple and clear as possible.

Learn plain english; use plain english. Plain English Campaign offers all sorts of guidance to lead you to the use of plain english. Whether it is preparing your Curriculum Vitae or web authoring, Plain English Campaign is at your service.

The Free Guides Section happens to be the most sought after section, giving you a good amount of free stuff to use plain english.

Join the Plain English Campaign at http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/index.htm

Dictionary.com for your "wordly" needs

If you are the one to look for meanings of words, their synonyms or antonyms frequently, dictionary.com is just the right place for you. Find meanings of words, search for synonyms, antonyms, etc. at Dictionary.com. The “Word of the Day“ Section gives you one new word, its meaning, usage, pronunciation, origin, etc. everyday.

A real vocabulary improving site, Dictionary.com can be accessed at http://dictionary.reference.com/

Synonym.com Antonym.com

Looking for synonyms of a word but don’t know where to find? Fond of finding antonyms for cryptic words, but don’t have an idea where to look for? Here is synonym.com helping you out online to find synonyms, antonyms and definitions of english words.

Synonym.com is built on WordNet, an online lexical reference system (an electronic lexical database) developed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory of Princeton University under the direction of Prof.George A.Miller.

The most interesting news about WordNet is that you can download its newest version 2.1(available for Windows and Unix-like Operating Systems) from the WordNet site http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

Check out synonyms, antonyms and definitions at http://www.synonym.com