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.