After I wrote my first couple of grammar books, I thought I needed a website. And I thought I might need a blog on my website, since a blog is routinely updated, thus improving a website’s search engine optimization (SEO). These days everyone (it seems) has a podcast. Back then, everyone had a blog.
So I started a blog and decided it would come out weekly. The first post was published on January 11, 2013 and was called “TYPO Is (Sometimes) Just a Euphemism.”
To prepare for the writing of this special 10th birthday blog post, I went through all 105 pages of my blog posts that are listed on the bottom of the blog page. I categorized them and listed many of the topics. Of course, some of the posts fell into more than one category, but my statistics are fairly accurate. Ten years is approximately 500 posts. Here are the categories and approximate number of posts in each category:
- Grammar instruction posts – 136
- Personal posts – 31
- Quirky or miscellaneous posts – 55
- Posts about writing – 19
- Holiday posts – 46
- Trivia posts – 9
- National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) posts – 3
- Posts about confusing words, such as homonyms – 38
- Posts about pronouns specifically – 20
- Posts about words – 48
- Guest posts – 28
- Quizzes – 33
- Posts about books – 17
Grammar Instruction – These topics warranted more than one post in the category :
- Commas – 18 (at least two about the Oxford comma)
- Common grammar goofs and peeves – mine and yours – 15
- Lay and lie – 8
- Misplaced modifiers – 5
- Rules you can break -4
- Clauses – 4
- Colons; quotes with other punctuation; quotation marks; tenses; hyphens, dashes, ellipses; lists; prepositions; interrupters, possessives – each 3 posts
- Flat adverbs; quotes, italics, bold, or caps; British versus American English; conjunctions; adverbs; adjectives; nouns; capitalizing titles; like and as; got and have; irregular verbs; colons and semicolons; possessives before gerunds – each 2 posts.
Some other grammar topics included quotes in dialogue; online dating and grammar; using italics; OK, ok, and okay; interjections; the position of “only”; and subjunctive mood.
Personal Posts
Topics that got more than one post:
- Amazon: A love and hate relationship -3
- Social media and me – 2
- My writing life – 2
- Going to conferences – 3
Other personal topics included Facebook trauma; trademark trouble; moving to Florida; how I learned about grammar; my talents and limitations; Sonoma County fires; synesthesia; my experience with scientology; and an interview with me.
Quirky and Miscellaneous Posts
- Phobias (a favorite topic of mine) – 6 posts
- Grammar goofs on TV – 5 posts
- Words of the Year – 2 posts
- Slang, jargon, and regional speech – 3 posts
Here are some other “miscellaneous” posts:
- palindromes
- mondegreens
- history of the ampersand
- paraprosdokians
- dyphemisms
- paranyms
- hyponyms, autonyms, euonyms, caconyms
- eponyms, metonyms, toponyms
- contronyms
- history of the exclamation point
- stories from the pandemic
- funny headlines
- Shakespeare idioms
- restaurant names
- the concept of and writing about time
Writing Posts
Well, posts about writing seem appropriate for a grammar blog! Cursive writing, redundancy, proofreading, and writing tips each got two posts.
Other writing post topics included:
- conciseness
- salutations and closings
- book design
- what editors do
- clarity
- trusting Spell Check
- plagiarism
- verbosity
- parallel writing
Holiday Posts
- New Year’s Resolutions – 7 posts
- National Grammar Day – 6 posts
- Christmas words and quotes – 4 posts
- Mother’s Day – 4 posts
- Thanksgiving posts – 4
- Valentines Day – 4 posts
- National Punctuation Day – 4 posts
- Independence Day – 3 posts
- Santa posts – 2
- Christmas jokes – 2
Other holiday posts included one about Halloween candy, history of fireworks, Memorial Day, holiday songs, Black Friday, and Father’s Day.
Trivia Posts
I have written four posts about language/word trivia. I also wrote some recent trivia posts about New Years, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.
NaNoWriMo Posts
November is National Novel Writing Month. I have participated three or four times, and I have written three posts about it.
Confusing Words Posts
I wrote a book about confusing words and malapropisms (Does Your Flamingo Flamenco?) and 38 posts about these words. The confusion among sometimes, sometime, and some time was talked about a few times!
Pronouns
Although pronouns come under the Grammar Instruction category, I wanted to call them out separately, since there were many of them:
- me and him
- myself – 4 posts
- one word or two (indefinite pronouns such as anyone/any one) – 4 posts
- I and me – 3 posts
- Who and whom – at least 2 posts
Words Posts
Who doesn’t love words? I have written about these words:
- misspelled
- weird – 13 posts
- trivia about words
- Covid words
- dead words – 2 posts
- cuss words
- tainted words
- political words
- new definitions of old words – 5 posts
- malapropisms – 3 posts
- mispronounced words – 7 posts
- Halloween words
- lost words
- election words
Guest Posts
I have run 28 guest posts by a variety of guest authors on a wide variety of topics – and I am always looking for great guest posters.
Quizzes
I love quiz posts!
- 20 confusing words quizzes
- 3 comma quizzes
- 2 punctuation quizzes
- 2 general grammar quizzes
- spelling quiz
- quiz on National Spelling Bee words
- phobia quiz
- italics versus quotes quiz
- word usage quiz
Books
My books posts have included reviews, banned books, my favorite books, and your favorite books.
Whew! That is a lot!
I try to give my posts fun and creative names. Here are some of them:
- To Comma or Not to Comma: That Is the Oxford
- Where Have All the Adverbs Gone?
- Winston Tastes Good Like (As) a Cigarette Should
- Oops….I Did It Again: Redundancy in Writing
- What’s Love Got to Do with It? A Valentine Word Test
- I Put a “Spell” on You!
- “Whom” Cares?
- Technology: No Place for Wimps
- The 7 Deadly Sins of Writing
- Manspreading May Cause Butt Dialing
- Go Slow: Flat Adverbs Ahead
- I Brang You an Irregular Verb
- The Curse of Cursive
- Rebel Without a Clause (guest post)
- Verb Tense-ion
- The Alien in Your Future (my favorite post of all time)
- Have Some M and N’s: More Confusing Words
- Don’t Take This “Laying” Down
In the years since this blog started, I have
- written a bunch more grammar books
- sold a bunch of grammar books (thank you!)
- written two novels
- written a memoir
- moved from California to Florida
- become a grandmother
- joined two boards
See you next week to start year 11!
You have wonderful posts! Educational and entertaining at the same time. Thanks for your informative blog.
Thank you! You keep me going!!!
Ten great years.
Let’s hope for many more (both years and posts) to some.
Thanks, Jags….and thank you for the wonderful guest posts you contributed. And more are welcome any time!
Congratulations on ten years and thank you – I love your blogs!
Thank you for reading the blog!!!
Congratulations and please continue to inspire and motivate English teachers and learners!!!
Thank you. I will do the best I can!
Congratulations Arlene!
That’s quite a list of accomplishments.
Your posts have been helpful and entertaining to read.
Keep up the good work,
Brenda
Thank you so much!!!!
This is so impressive! A huge body of work, with fascinating topics. What a magnificent resource you have provided. I suggest you compile your blog posts and sell the anthology in book form. I’d buy it and give it away as gifts! Fabulous!
Well, I did one: Fifty Shades of Grammar, but I have thought of doing another one, since I have so many more posts now. I am definitely going to think about it!
Happy Birthday! I recommend a gentle massage and Epsom salt soaks for your fingers.
Thank you! 😉 😉