Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

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Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Image:GrammarGirl180.JPG
Host(s) Mignon Fogarty
Website http://grammar.qdnow.com
RSS http://www.qdnow.com/grammar.xml
Launch Date 7/30/2006

"Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing" is an educational podcast that was launched in July 2006. This program, ranked in the top 10 podcasts at iTunes as of December 2006, offers short one-topic English grammar lessons at no charge to subscribers hoping to improve their writing skills. Archived audio shows and complete transcripts are available at the Grammar Girl website, and audio archives are also available from the iTunes music store.

Host Mignon Fogarty has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Washington and a master's degree in biology from Stanford University. She is also the wife of Patrick Fogarty, the host of the Armchair President podcast.

Contents

[edit] Listenership

The Grammar Girl podcast was rapidly embraced by listeners, reaching a Libsyn total audience of over 2,000,000 in the first six months following the show's launch. According to a Podtrac survey conducted in October 2006, approximately 50% of listeners are male and 50% of listeners are female. Listeners are encouraged to submit grammar questions by e-mail and voicemail. The majority of episodes are built around these submissions.

[edit] Recognition

The Grammar Girl podcast was the subject of an article in the Wall Street Journal (November 4-5, 2006), recommended by the German newspaper Bild.de (December 1, 2006), profiled on CNN.com (January 23, 2007), and positively reviewed by the Podcasting Tricks website (November 30,2006).

In their end-of-year review, iTunes staff listed the Grammar Girl podcast as a favorite for 2006. The show was also listed as an iTunes People's Choice podcast for 2006, ranking 29th in number of new subscribers for the year.

Mignon Fogarty appeared on the March 26th episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show as a grammar expert. She was on the show to answer a viewer question about the use of possessive aprostrophes. The viewer thought a previous show should have been entitled "Oprah's and Gayle's Big Adventure," but Fogarty confirmed that "Oprah and Gayle's Big Adventure" was a correct use of compound possession. She went on to discuss several other common grammar errors, including "Affect vs. Effect" and "Who vs. Whom."

[edit] Parodies

The Quick and Dirty Tips format used by Grammar Girl and the affiliated podcasts listed at QDnow (March 2, 2007) are the subject of ridicule at Pod Parody TV.

[edit] List of episodes

  1. Nixing The Horrid Of. How to stop using the word "of," and tighten up your writing.
  2. Wrestling With That First Sentence. Tips for writing a great lead. (Or is that lede?)
  3. I.e., E.g., Oh My!. Mix Latin with abbreviations and you never know what you'll get; but Grammar Girl will help you know when to use i.e., and when to use e.g.
  4. Size Matters (aka, How to Deal with Inches, Microliters, and More). How to write out those things that come after numbers: units of measure.
  5. Interviewing (aka, Making A Living By Playing Dumb). I'll share some of the best interviewing advice I got when starting out as a writer, and even the secret weapon I use in every interview.
  6. Comma Chameleon. Hot comma news! (I'm not kidding)
  7. Who Manages That Lousy Company?. Are corporations huge impersonal entities (i.e., "that"), or just a collection of warm, caring people (i.e., "who")? Grammar rules will decide!
  8. Which's Brew. Which versus that: the eternal quandary
  9. Splitting Up. Splitting infinitives: live a little!
  10. Threw, Through, Thru. When can U use informal spelling?
  11. I'm So Stylish. Adopt a style guide, and you can be stylish too.
  12. You've Got Questions. Wordiness and idioms, courtesy of our listeners.
  13. If I Were You. If I were a flying monkey, I would rule the world: A lesson in subjunctive verbs.
  14. Whom Do You Love? Him!. It's a great mnemonic for knowing when to use who and when to use whom.
  15. Title Cap Capers. Which words in a title should be capitalized?
  16. I'm Slowly Addicting You To Grammar. Is television addictive or addicting?
  17. I've Got A Preposition For You. Is it OK to end a sentence with a preposition?
  18. Excessive Repetitive Redundancy. Have you used a redundant acronym lately?
  19. It's FUBAR. Call the FBI ASAP!. Acronyms, initialisms, and abbreviations
  20. Grammar Affects Me. Affect versus effect: The episode you've all been asking for!
  21. 100 Proof. Hot proofreading news! Plus, some helpful tips.
  22. You Can Quote Me. Quotation marks: single or double?
  23. Chicago Style. Is "The Chicago Manual of Style" too long to be useful?
  24. The Power Of "Who". Do you have to say "who" when you are talking about a person?
  25. What Women Want. Can "woman" be an adjective?
  26. Among Friends. "Among" vs. "between" and "toward" vs. "towards."
  27. Rollin' Rollin' Colon. Simple rules for using colons.
  28. Dashing Through The Snow. A dashing young man can help you remember when to use dashes.
  29. He Makes Me Crazy. Grammar Girl goes out on a limb for generic singular pronouns.
  30. Introducing Sir Fragalot. Sentence fragments run amuck. (Yes, it's also spelled amok.)
  31. The Lord Is Come?. Subversive Christmas carols.
  32. Apostrophe Catastrophe. Learn Grammar Girl's shameful secret that involves an apostrophe.
  33. Announcements. Announcements about embedding images, the GG theme music, and a book giveaway.
  34. Saddam Hanged. Is the past tense of "hang" "hung" or "hanged"?
  35. Apostrophe Catastrophe Part II. The tough apostrophe issues.
  36. Are You A Grammar Snob Or A Helpful Friend?. Mr. Manners discusses how to correct other people's grammar.
  37. Don't You Dare Lay Down Sally!. "Lay" versus "lie"
  38. Don't Feel Badly.. "Bad" versus "badly"
  39. Farther Than You've Ever Gone Before. "Farther" versus "further"
  40. I Wrote This Episode Myself. How to use "myself" and other reflexive pronouns.
  41. The Most Unique Episode Ever. Modifying absolutes.
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