Tag: grammar
group name: novelistsonly
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June 13, 2008 07:10 AM EDT --
You're just writing along, trying to meet your deadline. You certainly don't mean to hurt anyone. But then, without even thinking about it, you've done it... you've dangled a participle. . . .
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June 22, 2008 02:00 AM EDT --
You probably know that if you accidentally type, say, aobut or Febuary in a Word document, squiggly little red underlining will alert you to your mistake. Then you just select the offending word and . . .
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July 06, 2008 10:40 PM EDT --
You're just writing along, trying to meet your deadline. You certainly don't mean to hurt anyone. But then, without even thinking about it, you've done it... you've dangled a participle. . . .
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December 28, 2007 11:15 PM EST --
Writers are as different a lot as any other profession. We have similarities (we enjoy a good tale), but are each unique individuals.
An example: I write a novel in snippets and not in any . . .
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June 13, 2008 11:00 PM EDT --
Passive Resistance
In this post we'll begin to examine the dreaded critiquing mark of passive .
"Passive-ness" has received excessive and perhaps undue scrutiny in the . . .
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June 13, 2008 07:18 AM EDT --
In Part I we explored dangling participles . Recall that a participle is a verb form that acts like an adjective , and a dangling participle describes a noun which is not in the sentence . Can you . . .
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June 13, 2008 01:44 PM EDT --
My previous posts taught how to correct dangling participles. This time we'll look at some other common errors that crop up with participial phrases.
Remember our device for checking whether a . . .
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June 13, 2008 11:12 PM EDT --
In the "Passive Resistance" articles , we learned how to recognize some of the passive voice's many disguises and how to deal with them. While the techniques varied, the result was always . . .
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June 22, 2008 08:58 PM EDT --
In my earlier post 22 Reasons Not To Trust Spell-Check , I gave you a test: Replace each (?) with the appropriate word from the following list.
I know (?) no way that Porsche could be (?). . . .
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June 23, 2008 04:54 PM EDT --
In the last post I offered you a challenge: to type the word 'til in MS Word . . . with a properly curving apostrophe. If you tried it, you probably typed 'til (note the mark is actually . . .
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January 29, 2008 08:00 PM EST --
We writers, while having many similarities, are a diverse lot. There are many areas of writing. I am not, by nature, a novelist. However, a good friend definitely is. He cranks out half a dozen in a year . . .
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June 16, 2008 11:23 AM EDT --
I ended my last post with a curious sentence:
But was and were , along with all the to-be verbs, are the source of many grammatical misunderstandings.
Or, simplified: . . .
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July 28, 2008 12:44 AM EDT --
German may be a tough language to learn, but they did make it easy on us in one aspect: all nouns are capitalized. You never have to beat your Brain against your Skull wondering whether this Word or that . . .
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June 16, 2008 10:20 AM EDT --
Earlier I promised a long-awaited distinction between passive voice and passive writing —or more specifically, passive verbs . Passive voice describes a sentence in which the subject receives . . .
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July 29, 2008 10:04 AM EDT --
Here's a quick overview of the helpful articles on grammar and writing now available at The Grammar Weasel :
Dangling Participles (series of 2 articles)
Participial Phrases
Absolute . . .
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August 13, 2008 12:34 PM EDT --
In my last post , I remarked that we were going to look at the most common use of periods in fiction after terminating a sentence: ellipses.
First, a clarification. Ellipses is the plural of both . . .
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August 13, 2008 01:14 PM EDT --
Previous post: Total Ellipse
In typing ellipses, you might have noticed that three consecutive periods triggers an autocorrect feature in Word. It converts “period-period-period” into . . .
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August 05, 2008 12:20 PM EDT --
The lowly period is the smallest of all punctuation marks. Easy to overlook Easy to accidentally double.. And those two goofs alone might cost me a publishing contract.
But it’s the period’s other . . .
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June 29, 2008 01:25 PM EDT --
In the last post , we saw how commas not only connect, they set apart. We should set off with commas anything not essential to the flow of the sentence. This would include, with some exceptions, the . . .
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June 13, 2008 11:06 PM EDT --
In Part I we learned that a sentence with a passive-voice verb takes the form:
A was/were B -ed
where A is a subject receiving action (rather than performing it) and B is . . .
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