Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Here is a worksheet on differentiating the adjective hippy from the noun hippie. This is a full-page worksheet with a short reading on the words under study, five modified cloze exercises, and space for students to write five sentences from subject to period using either one of these words. For the record, hippy means “someone with wide hips,” whereas hippie means “a long-haired 60s flower child.” We old hippies will thank you for the proper use of these words.

To give credit where credit is due (which if you follow this blog, you’ll know I do compulsively), this material was adapted from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage; amazingly, he allows unpaid access to the book at the Washington State University website.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

To depart from the Latin/Roman emphasis in this morning’s posts, here is a worksheet on the possessive pronouns his and her’s. This is essentially a document to remind students that one never uses an apostrophe with possessive pronouns–just the s without punctuation. This is full-page worksheet that has no structured (i.e. cloze) exercises, but rather calls upon student to compose extemporaneously a series of five sentences using possessive pronouns without apostrophes. This, like almost everything else on this site, is a Microsoft Word document. Therefore, you may alter it to your needs.

And, because giving credit where credit is due is an essential operating principle at Mark’s Text Terminal, let me say once more that this material was adapted from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, to which Professor Brians offers access without charge at the Washington State University website.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.