Fantasy Faction Fantasy Book Reviews & Community http://fantasy-faction.com
Tricksy Grammars
Back in the dark ages before the internet, when home computers had screens with 16 colors (if you were lucky), before the invention of spellcheck, when touch-typing was still taught on typewriters, I failed my elementary English class, twice. At the time I was unaware that I had a learning disability or that my inability to spell and notice errors in grammar (and basic math) was due to my being partially dyslexic. Back then, I just thought I hated English class (well school in general, but English specifically). I hated spelling, I hated grammar, I hated writing, I even hated reading, and that was the end of the story nothing would ever convince me differently. Luckily for me, when I hit middle school, two things happened to change that. First, I was finally diagnosed with learning disabilities and given the help that I had so sorely needed. And the second thing, the thing that really changed my life forever, was that spellcheck and grammar check were invented. Now I realize that these days everyone uses spellcheck and grammar and that they are very helpful tools with many different applications, but to a middle school student with dyslexia, it was like light shining down from Heaven itself! I could complete assignments by myself! I could write...for fun! How could it have taken eleven years of my life to realize that writing was fun?! Now granted back in the day, all I wrote were back-stories for my D&D characters and really bad poetry, but that was more than I’d ever written, outside of school, in my whole life. Why am I telling you all this? Well one reason is because of spellcheck and grammar check, I am now not only writing a fantasy book series, but am also an editor for an amazingly cool website called Fantasy-Faction (you may have heard of it), and my family and friends laugh at me every time I bring it up. Now before you get upset, they aren’t making fun of me or being mean, it’s just that the thought of me, the anti-spelling queen, being partially in charge of checking other people’s grammar is pretty bizarre and (if you are them) very amusing. The other reason I’m telling you this, is because I’m about to yell at you (sort of), and I wanted
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to give you some background as to why I’m doing it. :)
I started writing my fantasy story in 2010. I started helping edit articles and reviews on FantasyFaction last fall. I started drafting 75% or more of them myself at the beginning of this year. In that time, I’ve learned a lot about writing and editing. I’ve also learned that each author on this site has their own grammar quirks and mistakes they make in almost every article they send us. Some are better than others. In fact a few of our submitters are so good at what they do, that all I usually need to do to post their work, is format titles and add pictures. Others...well...others take a bit longer to go through. And it occurred to me that instead of having to trudge through the same mistakes every time I edit, I should save us all some time and point out the most common mistakes I’ve found when editing my own work and the work of others. I am not naming any names here, and I am not trying to be mean or anything, I am just trying to pass on what I’ve learned from my two plus years of writing and six plus months of editing experience. Grammar is hard! But with a little effort (and a spellchecker) anyone can improve their writing. And if I can do it (see above), you can do it too. ;)
Spelling Errors and Mixed Up Words This is the one I have the most trouble with to this day. I spellcheck everything I write in MS Word (even my tweets!). But, spellcheckers aren’t perfect. So, if you are using a word processor to type up your work, even if you think you are a perfect speller, make sure you use the spellchecker, THEN make sure you read it over to see if the spellcheck missed something. There are a ton of these tricky words, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some big ones, but here are some common things my spellcheck misses a lot: it’s instead of its there, they’re, their you're, your, you then and than words that end in ’s when they shouldn't who’s and whose proper nouns that aren’t in the spellchecker (especially people’s names)
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That last one is actually related to the next biggest mistake.
Capitalization A proper noun is exactly what it sounds like: the proper and specific name of a specific person, place, or thing. Jennie Ivins, Fantasy-Faction, The Hobbit, and New Jersey are all proper nouns and should ALWAYS be capitalized. They are, really, the only things that should always be capitalized, besides the first word in a sentence and the word I. If you want to emphasize a word in a sentence that’s not a proper noun, then you use formatting (bold, italics, underline, CAPS) instead.
Titles Okay, I know there are lots of ways to do titles. You can underline them, put them in quotes, or write them in ALL CAPS. On this site, we use italics. Here are some examples of titles that should be written in italics. Books - Storm Front by Jim Butcher Movies/TV Shows - Star Wars and Firefly Video/Computer Games - Skyrim Poems - Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?) The only time you use quotes for a title is if it’s a short story, a chapter title, or a song title. Speaking of quotes...
Quotes My husband started to get a twitch when he did the first edit of my book, due to all the errors I had in this area (mostly related to dialog tags, which I think is long enough to need its own article). Quotes can be used to “highlight” words. However, they should be used “sparingly” or you start to sound like someone who is using “finger quotes” every “five” minutes. See how "weird" that looks? So when should you use quotes then? To highlight a word being used differently than it normally is. An example from Wikipedia: Crystals somehow “know” which shape to grow into. The crystals don’t really “know” anything, they are rocks. The word know replaces the technical jargon you would need to explain why the crystals are actually doing what they do, so you put the word in quotes. When you are using slang or being ironic or sarcastic (i.e. using finger quotes). As Wikipedia puts it, “phrases that are descriptive but unusual, colloquial, folksy, startling, humorous, metaphoric, or contain a pun”.
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Rose has a “unique” outlook on life. This is generally a nice way of saying Rose is crazy. Rick made some “special” brownies. Here we are using a slang term. Special is in quotes so you know these are not just special brownies, they are “special” brownies. This is especially important if you still live at home and need to make sure your friends don’t share them with your parents. But I digress... Always keep in mind that your writing naturally highlights important words all by itself, so you don’t need to add a lot of quotes to it. If you structure your sentences properly, the thoughts you want to highlight will pop out to the reader simply because of the way you phrase them. A good rule of thumb is to read your work out loud. If you want the sentence to sound like someone is using finger quotes, because you want to make a point, or there is a word that need highlighting because it’s special in some way, keep them in. If the quotes break up the flow of the sentence, then leave them out. Overall, quotes in writing should be used sparingly.
Online Formatting This is more of a pet peeve than anything else. When you are writing a story in a word processor, or on paper, you always start a new paragraph with a tab in. That makes it easier to read and lets people know when you are starting a new paragraph. However, online most websites and forums don’t let you use the tab key to tab in, so instead of tabbing at the beginning of each paragraph, you should put a space between each paragraph. If you look at this article, that’s how it has been formatted. Also remember, when you are copy and pasting from Word (or whatever it is you write in) most sites will take out ALL of your formatting, so always go back and make sure your spacing, italics, bold, or whatever else are still there before you post something in an email, forum, or whatever.
Okay I’m done. Well maybe not “done” done. ;) I’ve probably left out some bits that I’ll remember as soon as I post this article, and I would also like to take a stab at explaining how dialog tags and the quotes and commas related to them work. But that will have to wait for another day. I hope these tips help you out some. Grammar is a tricky thing, but it gets easier with practice...and with spellcheck. Did I miss anything? Did I get something wrong? Let me know in the comments. Another important thing to learn with writing, is you are never done learning about writing. :) Title image by TurnersCollectibles.
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