Hone in or home in grammar girl books

Hone in hone means to sharpen and comes from an old english word that meant stone or rockyou hone a knife on a sharpening stone. Now shes turning her attention to improving our vocabulary. Check out her new york times bestseller, grammar girl s quick and dirty tips for better writing. Its the last two books in the seriesthe magicians nephew and the last battlethat i like best. Hone definition in the cambridge english dictionary.

Trying to group the two sayings together as one and decide which one is correct is pointless and unnecessary. The average person seems to have become more desensitized to poor grammar, but language lovers seem to be tormented by the flood of mutilated email and text messagesat least a lot of the people i hear from seem to be tormented. Steves sentence is tricky because it has three clauses with verb tenses that need to work together. Grammar girls quick and dirty tips for better writing by.

We talked about independent and dependent clauses in episode 6. York times bestseller grammar girls quick and dirty tips for better writing. To the delight of word nerds everywhere, grammar girl s quick and dirty tips for better writing came out yesterday. Mignon fogarty is the founder of quick and dirty tips and the author of seven books on language, including the new york times bestseller grammar girl s quick and dirty tips for better writing. Guide to grammar and punctuation with 20 resources to help.

To home in on means, of course, to proceed or direct attention toward an. If you hone your proofreading skills, you can become a soughtafter proofreader. Just know that to home in on something means to move toward a goal, such as the missile homed in on its. Now you can listen to the grammar girl podcast on youtube. I bought the grammar girl 2018 calendar and ive begun to listen to her podcasts while im walking.

Well break down the problem by comparing verb tenses in just one independent and one dependent clause at a time, instead of trying to decide for all three at once. Grammar girls 101 misused words youll never confuse again by. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world. In this weeks show, we talk about the difference between capital and capitol and about why citations matter and what to. Grammar girls quick and dirty tips for better writing. She is an inductee in the podcasting hall of fame, and the show is a fivetime winner of best education podcast in the. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, grammar girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Zero in if you think youll still have trouble remembering the difference between hone in and home in, the american heritage guide to contemporary usage and style suggests using the phrase zero in as an alternative to home in. An ngram illustrates the wider usage of home in on than hone in on, at least in current literature. Think of it as a honing stone to remember that to hone means to sharpenit kind of rhymes and both words have an n. To use one of my fathers favorite phrases, language lovers seem to feel as though they are being pecked to death.

Mignon fogarty is the host of grammar girl and founder of quick and dirty tips. That means the correct sentence is, the house belongs to miguel and me. Top 10 writing and grammar mistakes that even published. Turn out both are acceptable, but more often you are targeting or navigating towards something, like a homing missile, thus homein is. The verb home means to move toward a goal or to be guided to a target. To find something or get closer to something, you home in on it.

She is an inductee in the podcasting hall of fame, and the show is a fivetime winner of best education podcast in the podcast awards. Mignon fogarty, grammar girl, wrote a nyt bestseller, grammar girls quick and dirty tips for better writing. But some usage guides see notes below now recognize hone in on as an acceptable alternative to home in on. The zero tolerance approach to punctuation by lynne truss, the elements of style by william strunk jr. Mignon fogarty is grammar girl and the founder of quick and dirty tips. Grammar girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Our first example of home in on is from 1951, in a context having to do with aviation. You dont hone in on anything except maybe a sharp blade here is an example of the verb hone in a sentence. And the verb phrase hone in doesnt work as a grammatical parallel at all.

One of the most common causes of grammatical pain is the choice. Millions of people around the world communicate better thanks to mignon fogarty, aka grammar girl, whose toprated weekly grammar podcast has been downloaded more than 40 million times. Our earliest record of its figurative use is from 1956. If you feel the need to add the words in or in on, then the word youre looking for is probably home.