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One thing that caught my eye was your piece on the translations available for I miss you in Spanish. You said of the two translations, one of them (te echo de menos) was correct because (my emphasis) it had more results pages. To me, that raises an interesting question about the power of crowds. Does a crowd really always know best? What do you think? And I do mean you, you individually - you Emilio and you, the person reading this blog right now. Do you think a group of people always knows better than an individual person? Answers below please. Who knows, maybe we can do our own ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Learning English 'Power of Crowds' empirical research, right here!

Turning to the vocabulary and grammar aspects of your blog, today I thought we'd look at formal and informal writing and punctuation.

Formal and informal writing
I've noticed an interesting anomaly in your writing Emilio. On one hand you're very informal - using emoticons - you know, smiley faces and the like made from punctuation marks like this ;) and :( And you use lower-case letters for words that usually have capital letters. Both of these are features are very informal writing. On the other hand, you don't use contractions at all, and this makes your writing sound very formal.

My advice (since this is an English-learning web exercise) would be to use capital letters where they are traditionally called for (for example on Spain and Spanish) and to start using contractions to make your writing sound less formal.

Here are some of the most common contractions. I'm sure you know plenty more too. Why not try using them a bit more? It'll make your writing sound a lot more informal. I promise!

I am - I'm
she is - she's
you are - you're
I would - I'd
I had - I'd
I will - I'll
do not - don't
cannot - can't

Can you see where you could incorporate my advice in the following sentences from your blog? 1 - 5 are about contractions, 6 - 9 are about using capital or lowercase letters:

1. Today I am going to speak about how I use some internet resources.
2. I don't mean I will speak about ...
3. If you do not have to write a blog ...
4. And I would like to listen to your feedback...
5. I hope you will enjoy reading it.
6. How I use the Internet ...
7 In order to practise english ...
8 ... you could write in twitter.
9. ... got get help with english and Spanish vocabulary.

Punctuation
In English we have different marks that we use at the end of sentences.
A. We use a full stop (.) at the end of a sentence.
B. We use a question mark (?) if we're asking a question.
C. We use an exclamation mark (!) if we want to show something is very surprising.

Unless we're writing for a cartoon magazine, we don't usually use more than one ending mark per sentence (What did you say!?!??!!). And when we're quoting what someone else says, if the quote finishes at the end of a sentence, we don't need a full stop at the end of the quote, as well as another full stop at the end of the sentence.

Your second batch of homework is to find the punctuation mistakes in these sentences and then correct them.
10. ".... it's what Google says it is.".
11. Then write about it!.

That's all from me. Have a good weekend. And if the sun comes out for even a minute this weekend in rainy London, I promise I'll put my sun-screen on!

Nuala

Vocabulary
caption - words that are written underneath a cartoon or picture to give more information about the picture
caught my eye - my attention was attracted to
emphasis - the importance or attention that you give to something
crowds - a lot of people together
empirical - based on what is experienced or seen rather than on theory
anomaly - something that is different from what is usual
On one hand ... On the other (hand) - Fixed expression to show two different aspects of a situation
incorporate - include
a cartoon magazine or a comic book - a magazine, usually aimed at children, which has drawings of characters (for example, adventure heroes), with speech bubbles to show what characters are saying and thinking