This is not an effort to change you. I’m just puttin’ it out there.

It seemed like a good day to ironically use clipart. It's the trucker hat of the elearning world.

When I write for others, I use whatever style they want. (Actually, I write how I want and then they change it, which is fine. They’re usually paying me in some way, after all.) But when I write for myself — like here — I use no hyphen and no capitalized L in elearning. Here’s why:

Years ago, we referred to email as e-mail. Or eMail. Occasionally I still see one of those styles, and I think to myself, how quaint.

Maybe it looks weird now when I write elearning, but it doesn’t cause confusion and it won’t look quaint in ten years.

Oh, and the AP finally changed its Style Guide standard from e-mail to email yesterday. Web site became website, too. So there you go.

I realized on March 3 that March 4 is National Grammar Day, but I was getting ready to head out of town, so I didn’t have time to post. So it’s late but here you go… my latest grammar pet peeves, for my ranting pleasure and your enjoyment… and maybe edification.

1) Advance/Advanced. Conference season gives me ample opportunity to cringe at this, especially since I think huge endeavors are worth the copyediting effort (cheers to Learning Solutions, jeers to TechKnowledge and ICE). Advance registration is registering in advance; maybe advanced registration involves adding pre-conference programs…?

2) Penultimate. Ultimate means last; and penultimate means next to last, not most ultimate (which doesn’t even make sense).

3) Simple/Simplistic. Sometimes simplistic is used (incorrectly) to mean very simple, but actually it’s not a compliment. Simplistic means overly simple to the point of being misleading or under-nuanced.

Until next time…