I wrote last week about the “Knowledge is Power” theory of writing, but here’s the corollary: If you tie yourself too tightly to “fact” or “experience,” you are effectively limiting your potential. Instead, use that knowledge as a springboard. This is most obvious when writing fiction. Fiction thrives on conflict,…
MM: May I Quote You?
Let’s just do a quick run-down on how you use quotation marks, shall we? (American-style, that is–I know some of these rules are different with British usage, but can only speak for American-English.) Simply put–and it should be redundant–quotation marks are used for quotations. If you are quoting some of…
Knowledge Isn’t Always Power
Writing experts like to tell you to “Write What You Know.” The idea is that, especially for the beginning writer, you should stick to your own experience and build on it–whether it’s fiction or not. If you’re a teenager, for example, you might want to write about high school or…
MM: Brighten Up
Short but sweet today. My sister (glaring at me because I dare to like Strunk & White, which she and my niece are studying) asked me today what I thought about whether the preposition “up” should be used when writing a sentence such as: You brighten up my day Or…
MM: Titles
Do you remember, from grade school English, how to properly annotate a title? Titles of books, newspapers, magazines, movies, poems, journals, TV shows, works of art, musical compositions, ships, and airplanes should all be underlined. Or, italicized. They are more or less interchangeable so far as typing goes. This is…
MM: Negating Negativity
I almost touched on this the other day when I was talking about a kinder, gentler form of writing, and then realized that it was perfect for today’s Mangled Monday. Double-Negatives make a positive. (Raise your hand if you learned this in 7th grade math class.) Let’s do the grammatical…
Weakness is Strength (Sometimes)
Sometimes, though, that’s exactly what you need. Who wants to be told what to do all the time? Who wants the writer to do all the work for them? I mean, sure, that’s the writer’s job, but you have to leave something for the reader to do, a journey to take–and they have to choose to do it. If you’re trying to persuade, or trying to teach or explain, you can’t just say, “This is the way it is. Period.” You need to let the reader discover that for themselves.
MM: Splitting Hairs
So, let’s think … So many writing misconceptions abound, which one should I address today? How about split infinitives? That one’s always fun. In grammatical-speak, an infinitive is the most basic form of a verb. To be. To run. To cry. To write. The traditional idea is that they should…
Typo? Or Not a Typo? That is the Question
We’re all human. We all make mistakes from time to time, typing “tot he” instead of “to the,” missing the Shift key when typing “I,” stuff like that. It happens. And those kind of errors are what make things like automatic spell-checks useful, instead of detrimental. These kinds of errors,…
MM: Compound Adjectives
Most of you should know what an adjective is, but what about a Compound-Adjective? This is an adjective created when two or more adjectives modify the same noun. Blue-gray paint Absent-minded professor Semi-solid food Sweet-and-Sour pork The idea is that the hyphen will help to avoid confusion. Otherwise, that tasty…
A Muse on Muses
So, here I sit in front of this blank screen. I had an idea in my head for a post, opened up the page to write it down, but . . . poof! It disappeared. All I can hope is that it will resurface in time to stand up and…
MM: You’re Kidding
Sadly, it’s true. There are still people who get confused about when to use “your” and when to use “you’re.” This one is really simple. If you want to say, “You are,” you write “you’re.” It’s a contraction of the two words. If you mean to denote possession, you want…
Independent Thinking
This picture pretty much says everything all by itself, but let’s be clear and explain it any way. My father was writing an e-mail this morning and this window popped up in his automatic “Spelling and Grammar Checker.” The program objected to the phrase,”This site will explain” because it felt…
MM: Confusing Words, Part 2
Which of these words confuse you? Bath/Bathe: Bath: To soak in water. (“After a long day, all I want is a nice, hot bath.”) Bathe: The verb used when bathing. (“The dog was so filthy, it took me an hour to bathe him.” Discreet/Discrete: Discreet: Tactfully unobtrusive. (“The doctor was…
Homespun
As a knitter, I recently read a couple of articles about the upswing of making things by hand, and also an, um, unique competition for sock knitters, with great interest. “Handmade isn’t a fad… it’s a resurgence, one that is of a piece with the booming interest in organic food,”…
Strength
Writing manuals talk about the importance of “strong” writing. You know, the need to avoid wishy-washy, vague, round-about sentences, but how, exactly, are you supposed to do that? And why? The “how” is pretty straight-forward. Use active verbs. An active verb is one that, well, describes an action. Run. Write.…
MM: See, the Object is…
Last week, we discussed the Nominitive case for pronouns (I, he, they, etc.), so this week, naturally, we’re going to discuss the Objective Case: me, you, him, her, us, them, it, whom. Objective pronouns are used for direct objects of a sentence. Give her the key. Harry told them no.…
Building Blocks
So, what would you say was the main building block of writing? That’s right, class. The words. The way you put them together is of utmost importance, naturally, but ultimately, if you don’t have the vocabulary, all the technique in the world will avail you nothing. (This is one of…
MM: Just Between You and Me, er, I, er, Us….
Gillian left a comment on yesterday’s post asking for help knowing when to use the nominative case in a sentence. If the jargon is already making you say, “What?” it’s knowing the difference between saying, “You and I” and “You and me.” In fact, the sentence that caught her eye…
Writing Traditions
I spent most of my weekend immersed in family tradition (namely, baking Christmas Stollen for my Dad), and in between shuttling cookie sheets of loaves in and out of the oven, I was thinking about tradition. We all know about writing traditions. There are entire mythologies surrounding them. The hard-bitten…
A Little Modification
Let’s have a brief discussion of Adjectives and Adverbs, shall we? Adjectives, you may remember from school, are words (or phrases) that modify or describe nouns and pronouns. The yellow school bus The red apple. He is so tall. The bag was yellow. When using two or more adjectives in a…
MM: Conjunctivitis
Remember, back in school, when your teacher taught you never to start a sentence with a conjunction (and, but, or)? You’ll be pleased to know that, while it’s true that this is something you should avoid, it’s no longer a mandatory hard-and-fast rule. The important thing is that you not…
MM: Comma, Comma, Comma Chameleon…
Remember commas? Is it just me, or does there seem to be widespread confusion about when and where to use these handy little punctuation marks? Originally, they started out indicating where to take a breath when reading aloud, but now are used for so much more. Ultimately, though, they indicate…
Aside From That…
If you’ve been coming here for a while, you will have noticed that I like asides. You know, those tangents off from the main sentence that are so very convenient when writing. As a rule, though, they’re signs of lazy writing. Usually because the author neglected to take the time…
Not Quite So Holy
This has always been a word that intrigued me. Its root comes from “Holy Day,” of course, but it’s come to mean so much more. It’s used for a day off work or for a religious holy day. The Brits (“We’re going on holiday to the Brighton”) use it the…
MM: Labor Pains
Ouch! There go those contractions again! We’ve covered it’s and its. We’ve covered there/their/they’re. We’ve even talked about the uses of the apostrophe. But still, everywhere I go on the internet, contractions are being misused and causing pain to those of us who know better. (I swear, you’d think that…
Connecting Words
Okay, Joanna and Brad are asking about “connecting words,” and they don’t mean conjunctions like “and” or “but.” No, what they’re looking for are unique, or treasured words that we’ve found out and about in our daily travels, words that might not be common usage, or often heard, but which…
Writing, in Short
Maybe it’s my own, personal quirk, but I am not a big fan of abbreviations. I can’t really say why. Perhaps there is an affection for formality somewhere in my bone marrow, along with the parts of me that appreciate decent manners and a respect for punctuation. Mind you, I’m…
MM: Emphasis
Have you noticed that so many punctuation points are working overtime these days? Not just the apostrophe, but also Quotation marks, which are being used not only for dialogue or for the occasional title, but for emphasis. As in when somebody writes something like: Well, I don’t really “believe” in ghosts,…
We Look Alike, We Talk Alike….
You may remember this from grade school, but let’s review anyway, because English words do not always play fair. Homonyms are words that sound alike (and sometimes, but not always, spelled alike), but have completely different meanings. Bald/Balled/Bawled Basis/Bases Idle/Idol/Idyl Pare/Pear/Pare Heteronyms are words that are spelled alike (and sometimes,…