I'm a neon faggardy and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today we'll talk about the historical present tense, the phrase back and call, and real

fake bridges.

This first segment is by Neil Whitman.

A couple of months ago I ran an episode that contained part of an interview I'd done

with Laura Berguels, a business communication coach and storytelling expert.

If you listened to the episode, you might remember that she made a suggestion about how I

could heighten the drama in telling the story of how I began doing the Grammar Girl podcast.

Here's a short clip of how I began the story when I told it to Laura.

My background is in science and technology.

I was working as a science writer and editor and frankly I was quite bored.

I got interested in this thing called podcasting.

I love technology.

I love gadgets.

I started a science podcast called Absolute Science.

I fell in love with it.

I did that podcast for about eight months, but it was working as a freelance writer and

editor and time really is money when you're a freelancer and the podcast was taking so

much time that I couldn't justify doing it anymore.

But I didn't want to give up on podcasting.

Laura suggested that I could try telling it in the present tense instead of the past tense.

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