Groom Your Grammar with Grammar Girl

When I started writing my blogs and doing some freelancing, I realized my English grammar was a tad bit rusty. I can explain the difference between the present perfect and the simple past until the cows come home -- which I couldn't do before becoming an ESL teacher -- but that doesn't help much when writing professional English.

The first step I took to spruce up my writing skills was rereading the The Elements of Style cover to cover. I can't quite see myself doing the same with The Chicago Manual of Style, though.

So where can I go from here?

That's where Grammar Girl comes in. All right, the name isn't very PC. But we all know "Grammar Woman" just wouldn't have done the trick.

This approximately weekly blog and podcast site reviews English grammar rules, both basic and advanced. Take a look or a listen, especially if you fear you are using comma splices -- or, of course, if you can't quite remember what they are.

Can anybody write for Business Week?

I received a recent Business Week article through my Yahoo alerts last week. Here is the headline and lead-in:

"Poor Language Skills Hurting EU Firms

Brussels says the bloc's global competitiveness is at stake, as 11% of small businesses have lost out on revenue thanks to foreign language deficiencies "

Lost out on revenue thanks to foreign language deficiencies?

This phrase really sounds wrong to me. Isn't "thanks to" generally followed by something positive? Can we say "Thanks to the New Orleans flood, 80% of the city's residents were forced to leave their homes"?

I don't think so. Yet when I looked up the idiom in my own medium-sized American Heritage dictionary, doubt ensued : "thanks to: on account of, because of." This sounded very neutral. But closer research into the expression, from the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms , confirmed my suspicions:

"On account of, because of, as in Thanks to your help, we'll be done on time. This phrase alludes to gratitude being due to someone or something."

Thanks to Business Week for encouraging me to double-check my understanding of "thanks to!"