HAPPY Thanksgiving

Have a Wonderful Turkey Day!





Hugs,
♥ Crystal ♥

To Google, or to google

Google executives would rather you didn't use "Google" as a verb since doing so threatens their trademark, but as you know, it's very common to hear people say, "I Googled it," to mean they searched for something on Google.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary lists the verb "google" as lowercase, but notes that it is often capitalized. The Oxford English Dictionary draft entry shows the verb "Google" capitalized, but some of the example sentences have it lowercase. In searching for an older, analogous situation, I discovered that Bryan Garner says "xerox" is usually not capitalized when it's used as a verb, but sometimes it is.

There doesn't seem to be an absolute rule, although companies prefer that you capitalize trademarked terms if you insist on using them as verbs. The best advice I can give you is to pick a style and stick with it. As an editor, I respect the preference of companies and trademarks, and capitalize titles, especially Google!



Source: Grammar Girl

Vocabulary

Increase your vocabulary with not-very-common and/or not-frequently-used words.

Today's Weird Word is: advertent, and its pronounciation is: \ad-'vr-tnt\.

Advertent is a adjective meaning: giving attention – heedful.


Marcia listened to everything we said with an advertent expression on her face, then proceeded to tell us, point by point, exactly why she disagreed with us.

Rules Do Change

Spacing After Periods

Originally, typewriters had monospaced fonts, so two spaces after ending punctuation marks such as the period were used to make the text more legible. However, most computer fonts present no difficulty with proportion or legibility, so use just one space after a period, colon, question mark, or exclamation point at the end of a sentence. You will not be struck by lightning, I promise!

Quotation Marks and Punctuation

In Grandma’s day, a period used with quotation marks followed logic: Example: Myrtle said the word “darn”. The period went outside the quote because only the last word was in quotation marks, not the entire sentence. Example: Myrtle said, “I would never say that.” The period went inside the quotation mark because the entire sentence is a quote.

Today, in American English usage, the period always goes inside the quotation mark.

Example: Myrtle said the word “darn.”

This does not follow prior grammatical logic, but...things DO change!

Source: Grammarbook