A word is a “part of speech” only when it is used in a sentence. The function the word serves in a sentence is what makes it whatever part of speech it is.

Perhaps you’ve managed to get into the habit of writing every day, but you’ve also acquired the distraction habit. You sit down at your computer, fire up your word processor and type a couple of sentences – but then an email arrives, and once you’ve replied to that, you check Twitter and Facebook … then a friend rings to chat about weekend plans.

No writing tips on this post, but I figured many of our readers would be interested in know about this training program. BlogMastermind is basically a course, with the duration of 6 months, and the aim of giving all the information and tools that a person needs to create a successful blog and to make a living with it.

Below you will find the second batch with 10 more stories (you can read the first batch here). Basically we will have 7 batches with 10 stories each. They will get published every Monday, and the poll stays open until the following Sunday.

Once we have the 7 batch winners, we will post the stories together for a final voting round. You are free to leave feedback for the authors on the comment section below also. Remember that RSS and email subscribers might need to visit the website to be able to cast a vote on the poll.

Bombast (b?m’b?st’) means loud-mouthed, inflated speech. Bombast was cotton stuffing used to pad some types of clothing. The adjective is bombastic.

Want to know which mistakes to avoid? Here’s a publisher’s perspective. In the latest issue of Publishing Basics, Carolyn Madison reveals some of the errors that make publishers cringe.  These include misspellings, poor grammar and punctuation, structural problems, ambiguous messages and inaccurate content.

Cut to the chase is a common expression, meaning get to the point. It’s an exhortation to omit flowery phrases and unnecessary preamble and focus on the core issue. This expression first appeared in newspapers in the 1940s, though it has an older origin in the American film industry.

One reader, Bruce, wrote in to ask:

I find it curious that the written word now includes expressions clearly intended for verbal exchange. I’m referring to many of the suggestions you provided for email. In an attempt to be accurate and possibly too literal, I have tended to opt out of those uses. Specifically, when using phrases or words such as: “I said”, I use “I stated”, instead of “looking forward to hearing back from you”, I use “looking forward to your response”. What is your take on this?