My Top 3 Grammatical Mistakes
The Whine-Wine Blog
Because every rant, rave, or whine goes down better with a great glass of wine!!
Ok so I'm a hell of a writer but a grammarian I am not. I know, I know because I'm a writer I'm supposed to be grammar savvy. Well, I'm here the tell you that it ain't so. LOL. That's what editors are for!
But anywho, my top tree grammar mistakes are:
1. Split Infinitives – You know when you put a word in between to and the main verb in an infinitive.
Example:
Incorrect: He decided to boldly go where no man had gone before.
Correct: He decided to go boldly where no man had gone before.
2. Comma splicing – Joining two independent clauses with a comma rather than a semicolon or a period creates a run-on sentence. I have this bad!! Hey, wait was that sentence grammatically correct?
Example:
Incorrect: Many people think I'm tall, they don't realize I wear platform shoes.
Correct: Many people think I'm tall; they don't realize I wear platform shoes.
3. Double negatives: When applied to the same word or phrase, two negative modifiers confuse the meaning of the sentence.
Example:
Incorrect: I haven't hardly begun to think of my plans for the next year.
Correct: I have hardly begun to think of my plans for next year.
Now, here's a caveat to all of this, as a fiction writer, you can use a little leeway and creativity especially when you are writing dialog. To make your dialog believable it must sound like the everyday language resonating in your body of work.
I use "sparkcharts" that I get from Barns and Noble. They are cheat sheets that list some common grammar mistakes, gives you examples of nouns, pronouns, verbs and so on. Besides, I swear by Grammarly (www.grammarly.com) It's an app that allows you to check your documents to make sure it's grammatically correct. There's a free version as well as paid versions. No, I'm not a paid spokesperson for them but maybe after this blog post, I could be
.
Until next time – Enjoy the journey!
New book coming out soon: Here’s the trailer….
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