Grammar Attacks!
Just in time for link day appears this blog post. Even though it’s freshly pressed, it is so funny I must share, just in case you missed it. (And you might, with how wordpress is looking these days. Why did they have to move that column? It’s quite annoying.)
Anyway, Grammar Lolcatz.
Follow the rules… or not. Whatever.
As part of a critiquing website that I occasionally take part in, we are told to make recommendations. Dont’ slam the person in the critique and realize that grammar rules are meant to be broken. They are more guidelines .
That is all fine and good, until I critiqued a story for a guy who could not get his quotations right. It drove me insane. He sometimes had the punctuation on the inside, sometimes on the outside, sometimes he didn’t even close it.
Because of time, I edited one chapter, sent that to him, and then edited the other two later on in the week. In the between time, he made a comment that caused me to think he is still maybe late highschool or early college. He writes a lot–yes!–but I think I misjudged his age.
As such, at the end of my critique, I sent him a quick summary of quotation rules, and phrased it as, If you didn’t know these, well, here go. Soon afterwards, I wrote a post about quotations as an FYI.
This may seem like a side note, but my brother is going to school for graphic design. He is so good at what he does that he is making things like videos and ecards for the school. He gets frustrated though with video tutorials that say something along the lines of, “Here’s the rule of thirds. But you know what? This is art. Be creative.”
This is his opinion, and as such, I think it very much applies to writing.
Follow the rules of grammar, unless you can give me a good reason why you aren’t.
So I’m not saying that you can’t be creative with how you present information. Writing is creativity. But make sure you have a good reason why you don’t follow that rule before you decide to break it.
Why OCCPD is okay.
I used to suffer from OCCPD. What is OCCPD? Obsessive compulsive comma-placing disorder. I put commas all over the place, anywhere and everywhere that I pleased.
Then I started “maturing” and I started restricting my comma use and being careful with where I place them. I also learned about other puncutation marks, such as colons and m-dashes.
However, I’m now questioning this mindset of needing to overcome OCCPD. I have three reasons why it’s okay to have OCCPD.
1) Commas are easier to spot than no-commas. Basically, if no comma exists where a comma should go, you have to realize you need to put something where there’s nothing. If there is a comma, well, then your mind registers that you have placed punctuation there in the first place.
2) Commas are easier to remove than insert. Now you’ve noticed a comma. Does it belong? If it doesn’t, you just need to remove it. In order to insert a comma, you need to realize the need for the comma in the first place.
3) Reading something with commas is generally easier than reading it without. I proofread people’s papers as a job. Sometimes I’ll see sentences that are five lines long, and yet the writer maybe used only two commas. In that case, I first need to seperate the sentence down, and analyze each part, before I realize where the commas must actually be placed.
If a sentence is five lines long, and chopped into a bunch of little sections, it’s a lot easier to see what doesn’t belong.
Keep in mind that this is all based on the fact that comma rules aren’t always easy to remember. Nor are they set in stone. Even my english teacher admitted that sometimes in very short instances, it’s okay.
So now I think I’ll not restrict my comma use as much, but I’m still going to use my newer friends of m-dashes and, more rarely, colons, just because it’s fun to spice things up too.
Ease of the Write.
Some things concerning the challenge of writing a good book.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. ~ Samuel Johnson
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. ~ Enrique Jardiel Poncela
Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves. ~ Don Marquis
Commonly confused words
Words, either through typos or through not understand actual meanings, can often be mistake through spell check. Now, oftentimes we don’t know that we made a mistake, and usually it is easier to look it up in the dictionary. However, just in case you were wondering, this is my non-comprehensive list of all similar words and homophones that I could find.
Just in case you were wondering, I have a total of 452 words.
As a note, for those using safari or firefox, you can press either cmd+down arrow or spacebar to get to the bottom and tell me how impressed you are with me. :)
That being said, here is my list of commonly confused words.
- a lot / allot
- accent / ascent / assent
- accept / except
- acts / ax
- ad / add
- ado/adieu
- ads / adds / adz
- adverse / averse
- advice / advise
- affect / effect
- aide / aid
- ail / ale
- air / heir / err
- aisle / isle / I’ll
- all / awl
- all ready / already
- all together / altogether
- allowed / aloud
- allude / elude
- allusion / illusion
- already / all ready
- altar / alter
- angel / angle
- ant / aunt
- arc / ark
- are / our
- assay / essay
- assent / ascent
- assistance / assistants
- ate / eight
- aural / oral
- away / aweigh
- axil / axle
- aye / eye
- bail / bale
- bait / bate
- ball / bawl
- band / banned
- bard / barred
- bare / bear
- baron / barren
- base / bass
- bases / basis
- bazaar / bizarre
- be / bee
- beach / beech
- beat / beet
- beau / bow
- bell / belle
- berry / bury
- berth / birth
- billed / build
- bit / bite
- bite / byte
- blew / blue
- bloc / block
- boar / bore
- board / bored
- boarder / border
- bode / bowed
- bolder / boulder
- born / borne
- bough / bow
- bouillon / bullion
- boy / buoy
- braid/brayed
- braise/brays
- brake / break
- bread / bred
- breath / breathe / breadth
- brewed / brood
- brews / bruise
- bridle / bridal
- broach / brooch
- browse / brows
- bus/buss
- bussed/bust
- but / butt
- buy / by / bye
- cache / cash
- callous / callus
- cannon / canon
- canvas / canvass
- capital / capitol
- carat / carrot / caret / karat
- carol / carrel
- cast / caste
- cede / seed
- ceiling / sealing
- cell / sell
- cellar / seller
- censor / sensor
- cent / scent / sent
- cents / scents / sense
- cereal / serial
- cession / session
- chance / chants
- chased / chaste
- cheap / cheep
- chews / choose
- chic / sheik
- chilly / chili
- choir / quire
- choose / chose / choice
- choral / coral
- chord / cord
- chute / shoot
- cite / sight / site
- clause / claws
- click / clique
- close / clothes / cloze
- clothes / cloths
- coal / cole
- coarse / course
- colonel / kernel
- complement / compliment
- conscience / conscious
- coo / coup
- coop / coupe
- core / corps
- corps / corpse
- correspondence / correspondents
- council / counsel
- creak / creek
- crews / cruise
- cruel / crewel
- cue / queue
- currant / current
- curser / cursor
- cymbal / symbol
- dairy / diary
- dam / damn
- days / daze
- dear / deer
- definitely / defiantly
- defused / diffused
- descent / dissent
- dessert / desert
- device / devise
- dew / do / due
- die / dye
- disburse / disperse
- discreet / discrete
- do / dew / due
- doe / dough
- dominant / dominate
- done / dun
- draft / draught
- dual / duel
- dyeing / dying
- earn / urn
- eight / ate
- elicit / illicit
- eminent / imminent
- envelop / envelope
- everyday / every day
- ewe / you / yew
- eye / I
- facts / fax
- faint / feint
- fair / fare
- farther / further
- faun / fawn
- faze / phase
- feat / feet
- find / fined
- fir / fur
- fist / first
- flair / flare
- flair / flare
- flea / flee
- flex/flecks
- flew / flu / flue
- flocks / phlox
- flour / flower
- for / four / fore
- foreword / forward
- formally / formerly
- fort / forte
- forth / fourth
- foul / fowl
- friar / fryer
- fur / fir
- gait / gate
- gene / jean
- gild / guild
- gilt / guilt
- gnu / knew / new
- gored / gourd
- gorilla / guerrilla
- grayed/grade
- grease / Greece
- great / grate
- groan / grown
- guessed / guest
- hail / hale
- hair / hare
- hall / haul
- halve / have
- half / have
- hangar / hanger
- hart / heart
- hay / hey
- heal / heel / he’ll
- hear / here
- heard / herd
- heed / he’d
- hertz / hurts
- hew / hue / Hugh
- hi / high
- higher / hire
- him / hymn
- hoar / whore
- hoard / horde
- hoarse / horse
- hoes / hose
- hold / holed
- hole / whole
- holey / holy / wholly
- hostel / hostile
- hour / our
- human / humane
- idle / idol
- illicit / elicit
- in / inn
- insight / incite
- instance / instants
- intense / intents
- iron / ion
- its / it’s
- jail / gel / jell
- jam / jamb
- jeans / genes
- knap / nap
- knead / kneed / need
- knew / new
- knight / night
- knit / nit
- knot / not
- know / no
- know / now
- knows / nose
- laid / lade
- lain / lane
- later / latter
- lay / lei
- leach / leech
- lead / led
- leak / leek
- lean / lien
- leased / least
- lee / lea
- lessen / lesson
- levee / levy
- liar / lier / lyre
- lichen / liken
- lie / lye
- lieu / Lou
- lightning / lightening
- links / lynx
- load / lode
- loan / lone
- locks / lox
- loins / lions
- loop/loupe
- loose / lose
- loot / lute
- low / lo
- made / maid
- mail / male
- main / mane / Maine
- maize / maze
- male / mail
- mall / maul
- manner / manor
- mantel / mantle
- marry / merry / Mary
- marshal / martial
- massed / mast
- material / materiel
- maybe / may be
- meat / meet / mete
- medal / metal / mettle / meddle
- might / mite
- mince / mints
- mind / mined
- miner / minor
- missed / mist
- moan / mown
- mode / mowed
- moose / mousse
- moral / morale
- morn / mourn
- mourning / morning
- muscle / mussel
- must/mussed
- mustard / mustered
- naval / navel
- nay / neigh
- nix/nicks
- none / nun
- ode / owed
- oh / owe
- one / won
- or / ore / oar
- overdo / overdue
- overseas / oversees
- pail / pale
- pain / pane
- pair / pare / pear
- palate / palette / pallet
- passed / past
- patience / patients
- pause / paws
- pea / pee
- peace / piece
- peak / peek / pique
- peal / peel
- pear / pair
- pearl / purl
- pedal / peddle / petal
- peer / pier
- per / purr
- personal / personnel
- phrase/frays
- pie / pi
- pier / peer
- place/ plaice
- plain / plane
- plait / plate
- pleas / please
- plum / plumb
- pole / poll
- poor / pour / paw / pore
- praise/prays/preys
- pray / prey
- precede / proceed
- presence / presents
- prince / prints
- principal / principle
- profit / prophet
- quiet / quite
- rack / wrack
- rain / reign / rein
- raise / rays / raze
- rap / wrap
- rapped / rapt / wrapped
- rational / rationale
- raw / roar
- read / red
- read / reed
- real / reel
- reek / wreak
- respectfully / respectively
- rest / wrest
- retch / wretch
- reverend / reverent
- review / revue
- right / rite / write
- ring / wring
- road / rode / rowed
- roam / Rome
- roe / row
- role / roll
- root / route / rout
- rose / rows
- rote / wrote
- rough / ruff
- rung / wrung
- rye / wry
- sail / sale
- scared / scarred
- scene / seen
- scull / skull
- sea / see
- seam / seem
- seas / sees / seize
- sense / since
- serf / surf
- sew / so / sow
- shear / sheer
- shoe / shoo
- shone / shown
- shore / sure
- side / sighed
- sighs / size
- sight / site / cite
- slay / sleigh
- sleight / slight
- slew / slue / slough
- soar / sore
- soared / sword
- sole / soul
- some / sum
- son / sun
- staid / stayed
- stair / stare
- stake / steak
- stationary / stationery
- steal / steel
- step / steppe
- stile / style
- straight / strait
- suite / sweet
- summary / summery
- surge / serge
- tacks / tax
- tail / tale
- taught / taut
- tea / tee
- team / teem
- tear / tier
- tern / turn
- than / then
- their / there / they’re
- theirs / there’s
- therefore / therefor
- threw / through
- through / thorough / thought
- thrown / throne
- thyme / time
- tic / tick
- tide / tied
- to / too / two
- toad / towed
- toe / tow
- told / tolled
- track / tract
- trail / trial
- trussed / trust
- vain / vane / vein
- vale / veil
- vary / very
- vial / vile
- vice / vise
- wade / weighed
- wail / whale
- waist / waste
- wait / weight
- waive / wave
- wale / whale / wail
- want / wont
- ware / wear / where
- way / weigh / whey
- ways / weighs
- we / wee
- we’d / weed
- we’ll / wheel
- we’ve / weave
- weak / week
- weal / wheel
- wear / where
- weather / whether / wether
- wet / whet
- where / were
- which / witch
- while / wile
- whine / wine
- whirled/world
- whirred/word
- whose / who’s
- won / wan
- wood / would
- worn/warn
- write / right
- yoke / yolk
- yore / your / you’re
- you’ll / yole / yule
So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed.
Why to use a dictionary.
You know what a dictionary is, right? That big, 3000 page, dust-covered book at the top shelf of your bookshelve. The one you never dared to look at because you knew the font would be maybe -20 and you didn’t want to have to squint and find the right word, only to discover you’re spelling it wrong and need to try again.
Good news! That’s not the case anymore.
First of all, many computers have built in dictionaries. If they don’t, google has a good dictionary. There are also dictionaries available for your touch, so you can have one wherever you go.
So why don’t you dare use it? Or why would you even want to use it? They’re only for when you’re really stuck, right?
Not exactly. I use a dictionary all the time and it’s not because I don’t always know the meaning of a word, but because I want to find a better word.
1) Dictionaries are great to know the meaning of words. Sometimes we think we know the meaning of words that we really don’t know fully. Case in point: I talked with someone this past week about the word vehemently. I said I generally think of the world vehemently as angry and tense. But if you look it up, it means “Showing strong feeling, forceful, passionate, or intense.” In the way this person wanted to use it, it worked and it worked well. but I wouldn’t known that if I didn’t look it up in the dictionary. My perception of the word was not accurate with what the word really meant, and oftentimes, I find that to be true.
2) Dictionaries almost always contain a thesaurus. As a writer, this is a very useful tool. Say I’m writing a paper and I use the same word ten times on one page. Even if I have it spread out over the whole page, ten times is quite a lot. So I look up my word and find another word that replaces it, one that on occasion will sound better than the original word, or mean something better.
Case in point: I wanted to point a one-sentence summary of my story. I came up with:
A young, naive pirate questions everything after her ship accepts a new passenger.
I didn’t like “young, naive” at all. It sounded too repetitive and vague. It didn’t fully capture the attitude I was trying to find in this young girl. So I began looking words up and I eventually came up with:
An ingenuous pirate begins to question everything about her life after befriending a desperate brother.
(more on this process and the sentence development here. Why to do one-sentence summaries coming next week.)
Ingenuous means, “(of a person or action) innocent and unsuspecting.” with a futher note here:
Most people would rather be thought of as ingenuous, meaning straightforward and sincere (: an ingenuous confession of the truth), because it implies the simplicity of a child without the negative overtones.
(From the Apple dictionary.)
This word worked out very well for what I wanted to imply, which was exactly the innocence, unsuspicious, carefree nature of this girl.
3) You need to replace like forms with like forms. Say I have my sentence:
The oscillate of conservatism in America came suddenly after the election of Barack Obama.
I decide that I’ve used swing to much and I need to replace it. So I look it up.
swing
verb
1 the sign swung in the wind oscillate, sway, move back and forth, move to and fro, wave, wag, rock, flutter, flap.
2 Helen swung the bottle brandish, wave, flourish, wield, shake, wag, twirl.
3 this road swings off to the north curve, bend, veer, turn, bear, wind, twist, deviate, slew, skew, drift, head.
4 the balance swung from one party to the other change, fluctuate, shift, alter, oscillate, waver, alternate, seesaw, yo-yo, vary.
5 informal : if we keep trying, we can swing this deal accomplish, achieve, obtain, acquire, get, secure, net, win, attain, bag, hook; informal wangle, land.
noun
1 a swing of the pendulum oscillation, sway, wave.
2 a swing to the New Democrats in this constituency change, move; turnaround, turnabout, reversal, about face, volte face, change of heart, U-turn, sea change.
3 a swing toward plain food trend, tendency, drift, movement.
4 a mood swing fluctuation, change, shift, variation, oscillation.
I pick the first word I see: oscillate. I decide that’s good and insert it into my sentence.
The oscillate of conservatism in America came suddenly after the election of Barack Obama.
Did that work? No. Because I used a verb in place of a noun. I didn’t look to make sure it looked correct.
4) To confirm the type of word you are using. I do this often in my job as a writing assistant. If a person comes to me with a paper and I’m reading it, I might see a word that I’m wondering if they can even use it. Oftentimes, I can identify what the word is suppose to be functioning as, so I look it up. If the word is really a noun, when it should be a verb, I can then give my person a concrete reason why they cannot do it.
5) To confirm the meaning of similar sounding words: My sister wrote on her facebook wall today:
warmth=happiness therefor I’m not happy.
I’m not going to focus on her puncuation. Instead, I want to focus on the word “therefor.”
Therefor is a word; when I write it now, there’s no red line. However, I look up the meaning and I find:
adverb archaic
for that object or purpose.
She did not mean that. She meant:
adverb
for that reason; consequently : he was injured and therefore unable to play.
Yes, therefore probably came from therefor, but a) it’s archaic, so she doesn’t really want to use it, and b) “[For that purpose] I am not happy,” does not work.
Keep this in mind with all words that sound alike, but don’t quite look like. Words like summary and summery, and others like that.
Three Tools of Proofreading
(Abigail Side Note: I’m sorry about the nothingness of last week. I”m trying to juggle a new semester and about five new responsibilities. Hopefully things will start to balance out soon.)
Proofreading, which is basically just like editing, is something that everyone needs to do. No one should bang out ten pages of some random paper and call it a day. I have discussed elsewhere the benefits of editing but I think that the tools of the trade must be understood.
1) Spell checker. I will admit, I love spell checker. I am a horrible speller. I just learned last year how to spell “necessary”. Before that, spell check picked it up for me. One of the first things I do after I’m done writing is run a spell check on it. That clears up all the obvious errors.
That being understood,
You cannot rely on spell checker.
Seriously. There are so many similar words, like dug and drug, rely and relay, defiantly and definitely, summery and summary. None of these words mean the same thing, but they will show up as correct on spell check.
Also, a spell checker can’t distinguish between parts of grammar. If I drop an -ly from a word, it won’t know. It just looks at what you wrote, and compares it to what it finds in the dictionary.
That being said, we move on to tool number two.
2) Eyes. Imagine the horror of actually having to do something manually. </sarcasm> Seriously though, you do need to actually read though what you wrote slowly, looking for all those little errors that spell check missed, and typos you made. Usually, when you do this, something that made sense before might not actually make sense anymore. Understand: That’s Okay! That means you found a place that you’ll have to edit anyway later.
3) The Pen: This is going to seem like a nuisance, but, having a pen handy to mark where your mistakes are is a very valuable tool. Wait–I can’t mark with a pen on my computer. That would ruin it! Well, then that means you probably want to print it out.
See, I know that it may seem like a waste of trees. And for a long time I thought that printing things out to edit hem was, in fact, a waste of money. But after I have seen how many errors I missed when I didn’t print it out, I learned my lesson. Waste the trees! Your project will love you.
So that’s it. The three basic tools of proofreading. Yes, you can use one without the other, but it isn’t very advisable. You need all three to make sure that your manuscript is as good as it can possibly be.
Annoying Talkers
By the vary nature of being writers, we need to be aware of grammar and how thing should be said properly. Once, when I was younger, I submitted a story into a writing contest that “would of” and “could of” instead of “would’ve” and “could’ve”. Or would have and could have as I would do it most of the time now. That error, in part, gave me only honorable mention.
My reasoning with grammar is that if we speak as we should write, then our writing with be better the first time around and we can focus on more serious problems with our manuscripts instead of handling grammatical errors we should have fixed the first time through. With that in mind, I often try to speak, shall we say, properly, even though I do fail quite often.
So, my question for you this week is:
What grammatical mistake that people will use often drives you insane or do you find yourself correctly?
For myself, it’s good versus well. If someone uses good instead of well, I’ll correct them (if polite) including radio DJs. (No, I don’t call them, but I do make nasty comments at the radio.) I’ve been doing it for a little over a year now and most everyone in my family is getting much better.
suffocating under all that info
Now, for some writers, this is a basic topic, and for others, this is something difficult to understand, and even more difficult to avoid.
We take all of our time working very carefully, building backgrounds of characters, histories of various places and objects, and general mannerisms people use in our current novel. Then, of course, we want to share all of our brilliant information.
What do we do? We decide to write it in. In general, writers put this information in the beginning of their story.
Now, most any writer who has read much of anything writing or studied it in school understands the concept of having a captivating beginning. So, what sometimes happens is we have a story like this:
Martie ran down the alley, dodging mud holes and rotting garbage alike. Her heart beat so strongly in her chest that it felt like she might die. She gasped for air in strangled gasps, barely able to get enough. In her hand, she still carried the gun, clutching it like a lifeline. Something in the back of her mind told her that if anyone saw her, with the gun in her hand and the blood on her shirt, they would immediately call the police, but she could not seem to get rid of either. Instead, she ran, just like she always did.
Or maybe she hadn’t always run. As a child, she lived in the exact same apartment in the exact same area of town. She always went to the exact same school until she graduated one and could move up to the next. Even in college, she never jumped around from one to the next, or even one degree to the next, always sticking with what she had decided upon when she first began. It never seemed right to change.
She never was interested in running while in higshchool, opting for the more passive hobbies of drawing. Her dormroom was full of boxes upon boxes of sketchbooks full of everything she had scribbled down to pass the time. Many of them were good, some worth selling. A few she had sold.
But all this came to an end five months ago….
Five pages later, we finally get back to Martie running through the alleys, losing the reader on page three, if we are lucky.
This, my friend, is called an infodump by most people. It may occur in any part of the book, at any period, describing anything. The biggest problem with them is that they are generally long, boring, and usually not needed.
Wait! What am I to do if I can’t do this? How am I suppose to tell my reader anything about the beautiful world I created?
It’s called bite-sized pieces. One little bite-sized piece at a time.
First of all, you need to learn to recognize what an info dump is. They do generally appear at the beginning of the story, so that is usually a good place to look. This is very, very, very hard to do. I thought that this one novel I wrote had no real obvious info dump. When I let some other people read it, they suddenly said that, “Um, BTW, this part where you explain about how good of a pilot Shad is, that’s an infodump.” i honestly had no clue.
Secondly, you need to learn to evaluate logically if you need that infodump at that exact moment. Really, on page 1 with the above example, do I really need to go into the whole history of Martie’s life, hobbies, ect? Obviously, no. Do I really need to go into a whole history of Shad being main pilot by seventeen, when most people don’t even get their license until 23 or so on page 3? No.
The secret then is to share what you know in small snatches of information. This is sometimes difficult, sometimes easy. I tend to stick some of it in dialogue, but you don’t want to have Bob tell Mary what Bob and Mary have been going through for the last five months. Instead, you can have Bob run into one of his buddies from highschool and the buddy asks him how he’s doing and Bob can then explain everything, without it being obvious. (However, if this buddy does not play a role in the story, you don’t want to do that. Keep in mind that every scene needs a purpose.
I also might slip a sentence or two here or there, just to explain an action.
In general, I tend to stay with one thought when sharing information. And one tiny thought at that. It might be as large as three paragraphs but if it’ll be much longer than a page, maybe you should avoid doing that whole thing in one sitting.
Two things to keep in mind about the reader. One is that, although the reader might like your book, if he/she finds an infodump, there is a 50/50 change he/she will merely skip over it to the more interesting parts.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, you might not realize that the reader doesn’t know everything that you know. If you remove the infodump, the important information still has to be communicated to the reader, or else, you’ll leave the reader confused and frustrated. (I felt so confused when reading one book.) Keep this in mind. In Shad, I have a lot of abbrivations because the sweepers would talk like that. I still need to be able to tell the reader what SSD is and what SCL is, ZT, SRIS, FSR, ect, without listing them all off. This is challenging.
However, if you do manage to complete it to that point, then you might actually have a pretty decent story.
Abigail
always a writer 