Hi! I'm Charles Darling, the person who has to take primary responsibility for the Capital Guide to Grammar and Writing. Since the summer of 1995, I've been interested in using the World Wide Web to deliver educational material to my students and to the general public.
I've been teaching writing and literature courses at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut, since 1970. (Suddenly, I feel very tired.) I've spent much of that time teaching courses in developmental writing. Once upon a time, I was Director of Public Relations for Capital, when it was called Greater Hartford Community College. Having gone over to the dark side, I sometimes teach a course in Desktop Publishing for the Business-Technology Department. I also write poetry. The Saints of Diminished Capacity is an online anthology of my poems. I earned my bachelor's degree at the College of Wooster, picked up a master's in English from Washington University in St. Louis, and, in 1977, I finished my Ph.D. in English at the University of Connecticut, where I wrote my dissertation on the poetry of Richard Wilbur.
At Capital's commencement exercises in June of 2000, I was awarded the Board of Trustee's Certificate of Merit for Educational Excellence and Distinguished Service.
Grammar English, by the way, is the sometimes feisty and unpredictable alter ego who takes over the keyboard and writes responses to queries submitted to the ASK GRAMMAR feature of the Grammar and Writing Guide. She almost always knows what she's talking about or knows where to find the answers.