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Easter

Easter is exactly when it should be…

Every year, I hear someone complaining about how Easter is too late, or Easter is too early. And the number of people that complain about how Easter can't seem to have a fixed date… Every year, I respond to these complaints in the same fashion.

"You do know how Easter is calculated, don't you?"

The blank stares are borderline hilarious.

Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

(Okay, the Spring Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere.)

It's a simple calculation really, or at least one would assume so, until they discover the truth behind the equation. While the description appears to be one based on astronomical events, it's really not.

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How important really is grammar?

When I tell people that I'm a freelance editor (including other writers), they instantly assume that I'm a copyeditor, with a keen interest in working on the grammar and punctuation of my clients. I'm not surprised that writers often jump to that conclusion. Majority of editors that I encounter actually ARE copyeditors. However, what is the point behind looking at the appropriateness of a given word in a sentence when on page 152 the bad guys are setting up the bomb that will level the city, and the good guys find the bomb and disarm it by the end of page 154.

This may sound incredibly odd coming from a professional editor, but in all honesty, grammar takes a backseat to story and character.

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I’m a gluten for punishment. Autocorrect is a Beast!

Have you ever written a message on your favorite social media site only to have autocorrect kick in? You might have carefully selected the perfect word, but autocorrect thinks it knows better, changing that word out for something that is completely wrong. But it's not just on social media that autocorrect misbehaves. Sometimes, it decides to have a field day within MS Word and other word-processing programs too.

BUT, how many times have you actually just misspelled something but blamed autocorrect? Be honest. You know you've done it at least once or twice.

Today, I thought I'd pay homage to some of the masterpiece moments of autocorrect and just plain bad spelling.

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Aspiring Writer: The Sequel

In a post last year, I spoke about the term aspiring writer and how it's a term that I dislike. Back then, I had this wonderful circular argument about how if you write, then you are a writer — no aspiring about it. Regardless, I still see an insane number of people who insist on calling themselves aspiring writers.

Back when that original post first came out, someone had commented on one of my Facebook discussion groups that the term writer referred to a person who was paid to write.

To be fair, the term applies to people who want to make a career out of writing. Writer is a professional term.

You have no idea how much my skin crawls at this concept. Clearly, my arguments using the definitions in Merrian-Webster were insufficient to get my point across. Perhaps the Oxford English Dictionary might sway the ideas. So here goes.

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Smartphone

When Did Touch Become Non-tactile?

Random thoughts seem to hit me at the oddest of times, and the other morning was no different.

My husband's alarm decided that it wasn't doing a good enough job in getting my husband's attention, so it decided to wake me up instead. Yes, this inanimate object has decision-making skills. Curse you, Siri. So, there I was groaning internally, barely able to function because I went to bed way too late, wondering when the hell my husband was going to turn off his alarm.

After a good solid minute of the disgusting attempt at serenade music—perhaps it was less, but I couldn't tell—I rolled over to give him a good shove, only to discover that he wasn't there. He must have been in the shower or in the lounge having his breakfast, but wherever he was, he left his rude phone on the bedside table.

Grunting with effort, I dragged myself across the bed and grabbed his phone, expecting to see the same type of thing that my phone does when an alarm goes off—swipe circles. Nope. It turns out that iPhones don't work the same way Androids do. So, I activated the screen and touched the off button.

Then it hit me. When did touch become non-tactile?

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