Stamps Communications

11/17/2023

Writers Rotation, the podcast, debuted on Nov. 17, 2023. It's only been a year in the works, of course.

I'm interviewing people in different occupations about how writing plays into their work and lives. I'd love to have you click on an episode or two!
-- Kathie

Kathie Stamps interviews people in various professions about words and writing.

01/03/2023

'23 toast to word lovers.

I'm posting language lessons (and miscellaneous musings) on TikTok these days. Who knew I was such a ham!
-- Kathie

12/27/2021

Holiday Timing

New Year’s Eve is the last day of the year.
New Year’s Eve 2021 is Dec. 31, 2021.

New Year’s Day is the first day of the year.
New Year’s Day 2022 is Jan. 1, 2022.

These two dates happen within a second of each other, at midnight. In the preceding days, talking about a New Year’s party doesn’t really need a year mentioned because we all know where we are in the moment.

It’s for the years long ago and the years in the future that we need a consistent rule for the holiday date.

12/23/2021

Do you know people who are bothered by seeing Xmas instead of Christmas? The word Christmas is a shortened version, flipped around, of "the mass of Christ."

The mass of Christ = Christ's mass = Christmas.

It dates back to at least 1038, if not earlier.

By the 1500s Christmas was sometimes abbreviated as Xmas, because X is the Greek letter for chi, which is the first letter of Christ.

Happy holiday etymology to you and yours.

12/20/2021

Holiday Homophones
In prose, the interjection “oh” is spelled with two letters; it’s often followed with an exclamation point. Oh!

As a poetic interjection, "O" is a capital letter. It is not followed by a comma.

Musical note: Can you play a C major scale on the piano? If so, If you can play Joy to the World. Just go backward instead of forward, in the rhythm of the tune. It works in all 12 major scales and on any musical instrument.

09/01/2020

Take a singular noun (woman) and make it possessive by adding an apostrophe and the letter s (woman's).

Take a plural noun that doesn't end in 's' already (women) and do the same thing to make it possessive: add an apostrophe + s (women's).

Department stores have women's, men's and children's clothes.

06/01/2020

An overarching approach, concept, goal, message, process, theme or topic is the one that dominates all others.

There's no hard 'k' sound.

05/18/2020

The same principle applies to money and ages. This thing cost five dollars (or $5); I handed over a five-dollar bill She is five years old; she is a five-year-old child (or a 5-year-old).

Yes, a unit of measurement is singular. Units are plural.

05/11/2020

Job titles aren't capitalized in regular sentences. You are the founder and president of the company, or perhaps its executive director, or even a former pope, president, governor or mayor. In signature lines and business cards, cap all you want.

Capitalize formal titles preceding a person's name in the same way you would use Mr., Ms. or Dr. before the name.

Chief executive officers and other C-suite titles like CFO, CIO, CMO, CTO are capitalized because they're initialisms.

05/04/2020

In professional writing, 'continual' will be more common (and accurate).

Mnemonic device: think of the hissing sound of continuousssss and ceaselesssss.

04/27/2020

Resilience (noun)
Resilient (adjective)

When you can bounce back from a stressful or unfortunate situation, you are resilient because you have resilience. (Objects can also exhibit a state of resilience.) Dictionaries list resiliency as an alternative spelling for resilience, but that extra syllable sounds like scratching a chalkboard to some of us. ;)

04/06/2020

In casual writing (texts to friends, dialog in fiction, e.g.) we use ordinal numbers. "It's on the 12th."

In business writing and other formal instances, we use cardinal numbers. "The event is on April 12."

Ordinal: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc.
Cardinal: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.

04/01/2020

If it's April 1, it's April Fools' Day. Also known as All Fools' Day, this unofficial holiday has been around for centuries. Chicago Manual of Style and Associated Press Stylebook use the plural possessive by adding an 's' and then an apostrophe.

03/16/2020

Suffixes. Are we supposed to double the consonant at the end of a verb when we add -ed or -ing? In the United States, the answer depends on the sound of the word.*

When the pronunciation accent is on the first syllable, add a plain old -ed or -ing to the verb. No doubling.

Cancel (pronounced CAN-cel) becomes canceled or canceling. Cancellation has two Ls because the pronunciation is cancel-LAY-shun.

Benefit (BEN-e-fit): benefited, benefiting
Bicker (BICK-er): bickered, bickering
Happen (HAP-pen): happened, happening
Profit (PROF-it): profited, profiting
Quarrel (QUAR-rel): quarreled, quarreling
Travel (TRA-vel): traveled, traveling
Visit (VIS-it): visited, visiting

When a verb has more than one syllable, the final consonant is doubled when the accent is on the last syllable.

Admit ("ad-MIT"): admitted, admitting
Commit ("com-MIT"): committed, committing
Confer ("con-FER"): conferred, conferring
Occur ("oc-CUR"): occurred, occurring
Prefer ("pre-FER"): preferred, preferring

*While there are surely exceptions, this rule applies to verbs ending in consonant-vowel-consonant (travel, e.g., ends in v-e-l), not verbs ending in vowel-vowel-consonant (remain, e.g., ends in a-i-n, which would make the spelling remained, remaining).

02/24/2020

Let's conjugate: leap-leaped-leaped.

"Leaped" is the preferred spelling in American English for the past tense and past participle, while "leapt" is the more common British spelling.

The phrases "leap day" and "leap year" are not proper nouns, so they're not capitalized within regular sentences. It's perfectly fine to cap in greetings. "Happy Leap Year 2020!"

Does leap year happen every four years? Technically, no. When the Gregorian calendar became the Julian calendar in 1582, the leap year was established as a year divisible by four, but not divisible by 100, unless that year would be divisible by 400. The year 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 won't be.

02/10/2020

One thing is clear. Two things are clear.

When we talk about one "of the" things, there are at least two possible things (maybe dozens or millions?), not just one thing.

One of the most important things... one of the best things... there's always an 's' on the things or ways or nouns at the end.

(For those of you wondering why on earth this is a grammar tip, I've heard several references to "one of the reason" and "one of the best way" lately. -- Kathie)