The Write Stuff. Grammarly: How to Sound Super Smart Without Even Trying (Much).

Note: I used Grammarly to Grammar Check this post, because I want to make my English Teacher think I valued her efforts instead of passing notes in class. 

Being a writer has the obvious problem that people expect me to be an expert on writing. The moment you get a byline or a blog header, you are expected to become a veritable savant of the English language. This is like saying that just because I can make change, I’m an expert mathematician.

The truth is that when it comes to writing I’m more train of thought, slip of the tongue, than scholarly. I like to write in a sort of flowing mess of words and feelings and hope that somehow the majority of readers – okay, some of them – can make sense of it all.

If my participles are dangling I don’t want to know about it. That sort of worry just trips a person up.

Harder still is proofreading. On the surface, proofreading is simple. All you need to do is read over the words you have written and insure they are not a hot mess of grammatical and spelling errors. In truth, it is ridiculously easy to catch OTHER PEOPLE’S mistakes and virtually impossible, after a point, to see your own.

Along comes Grammarly, a wonderful and much needed service designed to save bloggers from the all-too-fallible act of proofreading themselves.While it might be argued that proofreading isn’t “thatimportant, that readers understand and forgive typos and that you can always edit or clarify a correction after the fact I think there is something to be said for prevention.

Just ask the person who was lauded as the new head of “Pubic Relations" in a company wide publication.

Grammarly. Not only saves your writing but your reputation.

Weekly Read: Focus

 Weekly Column: Finding My Focus 
I took the standard boatload of back to school photos of my children this year. There are the requisite posed photos on the rock we have used since they were infants. The rock is a perfect photo spot. No matter what the state of the yard, with a bank of trees behind it, the rock always keeps the background of our photographs picture perfect.

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