Sam

Author's details

Name: Samantha Bennett
Date registered: January 26, 2015

Latest posts

  1. Happy Holidays from the Gripes — November 27, 2017
  2. 12 items or FEWER — June 10, 2017
  3. Not quite as slick as Commander Data — May 28, 2017
  4. Love your doggo? Here’s a new set of words to use, thanks to social media — May 3, 2017
  5. WordPlay: Storytelling at Bricolage in downtown Pittsburgh — March 27, 2017

Most commented posts

  1. A new place to find everything Sam — 2 comments

Author's posts listings

Jan 29

Not the greatest of e’s

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Words

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It puzzles me to hear the odd way people sometimes pronounce the word “processes.” They say “processees,” as if it were the name of a Greek hero, mighty Processes, friend of Hercules and Achilles, slayer of Parentheses and Apostrophes. There are, of course, words that come from Greek and do make their plurals with “ees” sounds, …

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Jan 22

Learn from others’ mistakes

Categories:

Internet

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It’s not difficult to find online examples of spelling, grammar and usage fails that have been run up the flagpole for mockery like somebody’s polka-dot underpants. To some, this seems mean; let’s face it, even the most verbally careful and precise of us has hastily, furiously or drunkenly dashed off a note or blog post that would …

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Jan 15

To learn how something works, take it apart

Categories:

Education

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As an adolescent, I learned to diagram sentences. People that age rarely know what that means anymore. When you diagram a sentence, you create a kind of map of it, like a wiring diagram or a flow chart, that illustrates exactly how all the words in that sentence relate to each other and what roles …

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Jul 04

A new revolution: The singular they

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News

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One of the active fronts in grammar currently is the growing acceptance–or even requirement, in some cases–of the word “they” to refer to a person of unknown or possibly nonbinary gender. Newspapers and other publishers are struggling to come up with a policy or style about this, while strict-constructionist grammarians shriek with horror and fumble …

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Jun 12

Online daters: Grammar is even sexier than your smile!

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News

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It’s official, according to a survey by Match.com: Online daters judge potential partners most by their hygiene (and, let’s face it, rightly so) and second by their grammar. …good grammar rated more important than a partner’s confidence or their teeth. This is huge. Whitening costs money; diagramming sentences is a free and delightful hobby. OK, …

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Jun 14

The wrap-up on THREAD

Categories:

Events

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Emily Bazelon at Mory's

So much was packed into the four days of THREAD at Yale, I feel like I’m still processing it even though it started a week ago tonight. I came home with a head full of ideas and pages and pages of notes—notes I’m actually going to refer back to, unlike most of the notes I’ve …

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May 18

The kicking and screaming will subside soon. Yeah, I’m on Twitter.

Categories:

News

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If you follow me, I promise I won’t barrage your feed with a lot of nonsense. Just a little bit of nonsense. Seriously, I have one follower and bless her, I don’t know who she is. (I am creeped out by having to say I have followers. Follower. I am not running a cult.) @4sambennett

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May 17

I’m going back to Yale for THREAD!

Categories:

Events

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THREAD at Yale is a gathering of writers to explore narrative journalism (a k a storytelling) in all its various, evolving modern forms and media–and I’ve been accepted to attend! I couldn’t be more excited to be part of the inaugural group, and I hope there will be many more over the coming years, because …

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Jan 26

A new place to find everything Sam

Categories:

News

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Hi, I’m humorist and former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Samantha Bennett, and this is my website. While it’s still got that new-website smell, I may be a bit cautious and irregular about posting to it. I beg your patience. I am an advocate for good grammar, punctuation and usage — as long as none of that gets …

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