Kim Siever’s Blog

When you are going to contact someone on the telephone, which of the following do you use?

I’m going to phone Jill.

I’m going to call Jill.

Please comment below which you use (or if you use something else entirely), and let me know where you live.

Received this today via email.

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Canada’s economy.

Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks and car companies, that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1. They must retire. Twenty million job openings. Unemployment fixed.
2. They must buy a new Canadian car. Twenty million cars ordered. Auto industry fixed.
3. They must either buy a house or pay off their mortgage. Housing crisis fixed.
4. They must send their kids to school/college/university. Crime rate fixed.
5. Buy $50 of alcohol/tobacco/gas a week. There’s your money back in duty, tax, etc.

It can’t get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

Above is my cultural heritage: paternal on the left and maternal on the right.

Cr = Cree

Cz = Czech

D = Dutch

E = English

F = French

G = German

Sc = Scottish

I have a little Spanish in there that goes way back, and I may have Danish but have been unable to confirm that yet.

This post is part of the Canadian Style series.

1.08 University degrees, professional designations, military decorations, honours, awards and memberships

Do not follow a person’s name with more than two abbreviations unless required for information or protocol purposes. Select the two highest honours of different types and list them in the following order of precedence:

1. Distinctions conferred directly by the Crown (VC, QC, OC, etc)
2. University degrees
3. Membership in societies and other distinctions.

Do not use periods.

1. Stop runaway sentences
2. However needs a cap and a comma
3. Get itsy bitsy its correct
4. Put apostrophes in their place
5. Trap the wandering only
6. Me me me, not I myself
7. Items on a list must be a matching set
8. Each and every one is singular
9. Get tricky subjects to agree with their verbs
10. Make sure your starter phrase refers to the very next word

See the detailed list at Quality Web Content.

1. Third conditional
2. Don’t vs doesn’t
3. Bring vs take
4. Fewer vs less
5. Semicolon use with however
6. Have vs of
7. Double negative
8. Present perfect
9. Went vs gone
10. Its vs it’s

See the detailed list at Karen’s Linguistic Issues.

This is part of the difference between series.

People often confuse these two closely related Latin abbreviations. Here is the difference.

I.e. is short for id est, which means “that is” or “in other words”.

I work 35 hours a week—i.e. I have 7-hour workdays.

E.g is short for exempli gratia, which means “for the sake of example” or “for example”.

I like red fruit—e.g. apples, tomatoes, and pomegranates.

This post is part of the Canadian Style series.

2.13 Points of the compass

Write as one word compass directions consisting of two points, but use a hyphen after the first point in those compounds consisting of three points.

• northwest
• south-southeast