In the first fiction workshop I ever took, our instructor said to us, “Do you know what the difference between a really good fiction writer and you is? They make better sentences.” I knew even then that there was more of a difference between those writers and us, but his words have always stuck with… Read more »
The sticker on my laptop reading “I am silently correcting your grammar” might make me chuckle, but it is not, in fact, true. As an editor, people sometimes send me screenshots of misspellings and grammatical errors that they found funny. Again, I may chuckle, but before I declare that writing “wrong,” I must first make… Read more »
Microsoft Word has officially drawn a line in the sand—a squiggly red one, that is. And depending on your typing training (and how recently you’ve updated your software), you may have started seeing a lot more of those squiggly lines pop up recently. That’s because Microsoft Word is now flagging two spaces after a sentence… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to our guest, the award-winning journalist, essayist, and poet Marybeth Niederkorn. In this interview, we talk about her first full-length poetry collection, Times Knew Roamin’, and how she used poetry to capture emotion and mental space. We also teaching writing and how to… Read more »
What’s the fastest way to lose your readers’ trust and interest? Sprinkle your text with grammar mistakes: mess with subject-verb agreement, write only in fragments or run-ons, add apostrophes where they don’t belong, and for good measure, get creative with spelling. If, however, you want to maintain credibility, you’ll need to mop up grammar errors… Read more »
The one grammar problem I see most frequently when I teach creative writing is with dialogue punctuation. And it’s understandable why this topic leaves many writers mystified. Dialogue punctuation is confusing. Is it a comma or a period before the end-quote? What if you have a question mark or an exclamation point? Here’s a quick… Read more »
