Write Your Novel!: copy editing

Showing posts with label copy editing. Show all posts

Writing syle ... exactly what is it?

Your writing style is your unique writer's voice -- and flaws here are the hardest things of all to find and correct, because these are most often "spoken language" traits, "habits of speech." They pass over into the written word, where they don't belong, and where they glare off the page sounding clumsy, awkward, or just plain weird.

There is no five-minute fix for this point of copy editing, but many years ago a slim little book was written, Elements of Style. In 1918, William Strunk Jr., an English professor, attempted to touch down on every essential element and explain it with examples. In the following 90 years, the work has been revised several times; it was released into the public domain in 1995, and at the time of this writing you can buy it on paper (Macmillan, New York), or download it as an ebook.

Stay on this page, and a little further down, we'll lift the cover and take a peek into Strunk's slim volume.

Some errors of style are colloquialisms, or regionalisms — slang terms from a geographical area which don't mean much, a hundred miles away. For instance:

A "buttie" and a "sarnie" are the same thing. A sandwich. But only in the UK. "Miffed" means annoyed, so long as you're in the US. "Chuntering" is a cross between grumbling and chattering ... in the UK. "Chooks and snags and keks" are chickens and sausages and eggs ... so long as you're in Australia. "Pollies" could be parrots or politicians, depending on where you are. "Singlets and beanies" are undershirts and woollen hats ... in Australia. "Sourdoughs and Cheechakos" are terms making perfect sense, in Alaska! "Pootling" is a verb meaning "to drive slowly" or wander about at leisure ... in London.

So, watch out for colloquialisms and regionalisms in your narrative. You can use them in dialog, where they're important in the development of your character's unique voice. So long as the meaning is either contextually clear, or you make it clear, this is the place to use colloquialisms. It's when they escape into the narrative that the problem begins!

However, most errors of style that come out at the copy editing stage are speech patterns which don't work on paper. A good example of this is the passive voice. In speech, you can get away with using the passive voice; it sounds absolutely normal: "Insufficient time is being spent on the problem," is perfectly normal in speech.

However, agents, editors and publishers want the active voice, virtually to the exclusion of all else. In the active voice you would say, "The problem is being neglected."

Look at these examples of active and passive; sort them out and see the way to navigate through these rapids:

Passive:
The river was being progressively polluted by farming along both banks.
Active:
Farmer along both banks of the river were progressively polluting it.

Passive:
The little boy was brought to school by his father.
Active:
The man brought his little boy to school.

Passive:
The book had been read by a thousand students.
Active:
A thousand students had read the book.

Passive:
The intruder was mauled by three guard dogs.
Active:
Three guard dogs mauled the intruder.

Passive:
Maureen was made a fool of by Uncle Arthur.
Active:
Uncle Arthur made a fool of Maureen.

Here's the trick: look for the verb. (Above, the verbs are bring read, maul, make, and "progressively pollute.") Look for who performs the verb. Reword the sentence to make sure that the subject is actually performing the verb:

Passive: The cat was rescued by two young girls.
Verb: rescue.
The girls performed the rescue, not the cat!
The verb was performed ON the cat -- he was rescued!
Therefore,
Active: Two young girls rescued the cat.

Editors are quite strict about this point. It's usually active voice or the rejection pile.

Watch out particularly for catch phrases. For instance, "A fine performance was given by all concerned," sounds fine in your ear, but on paper, editors want to see the active voice: "All concerned delivered fine performances."

Copy editing is the time to be thorough, and meticulous ... and to know the rules.

Another excellent example of an error of style is to overindulge in "wordiness." When we're speaking, our speech patterns govern how we talk, describe things, relate other conversations, and, again, we can get away with almost anything. However, in text, wordiness soon becomes apparent. Your copy editing will be an interesting experience for some time, as you discover how to weed passages like this:

Try this:

The simplest rule is: never use five words to say what you can say in three! (Editors and agents can spot this at a glance, and they will know (or think) your work is padded out to make a short story much longer. Some magazines pay by the word, and even though its only 3c or 5c per word, if you can sprawl the story out over an extra thousand words, you just picked up another fifty dollars! Expect strict editing from magazines that pay by the word, for obvious reasons.)

Literally hundreds of bad speech habits shadow every word we speak aloud, and none of them matters because the spoken word vanishes into the ether. The trouble starts when they're written down. They come back to haunt us. For this reason, political speeches are written long ahead of time, by professional speech writers!

Having said all this, it is also very important to find your own unique "voice" as a writer, and hang onto it. If 250 different writers were to obey every rule of the little book Elements of Style, they would sound almost identical.

This might be fine for academic writing -- but not for fiction, where it's a writer's unique treatment of words, sentences, dialog, narrative, discription, that go together to make successful fiction happen. We don't want or need romances, westerns, historicals and science fiction to all sound alike!

Copy editing is a process in which you must use your judgement. Don't get so wordy that editors and agents constantly reject you ... at the same time, don't let adherence to the Elements of Style strangle out either your voice or your creativity.

At times in this area of copy editing, it will be as if you're walking on a tightrope. When you begin to feel overwhelmed, STOP. Instead of editing yourself to death, or rewriting for the tenth time, go for a walk. Put on some music. Make coffee (apple tea will also get your brain going). Put your feet up. Pick up a couple of dozen books by other writers, in your genre, if you're writing in a niche. READ. See how other writers express themselves by flipping through the books and touching down on a paragraph here and there. You're not looking at the story or the character development, or the descriptive narrative. You're looking at the flow of words.

And some of the time, you're going to see thoroughly sloppy writing. Best-selling writers are allowed to break the rules. When you're breaking into the industry at the bottom, you have to know what the rules are, and play by them. However, if you pick up a dozen books and read a few pages here and there, you'll see some extremely good writing, as well as dross.

Be analytical. Try to key, or focus, on what these writers are doing that works, and works well. See if you can get into the habit of writing concisely. If not, fall back on copy editing to prune, or weed, sentences which are too wordy. The more you do this, the easier it will become. Eventually, you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it.

Errors in style ... the Elements of Style ... is an absolutely vast subject. An in-depth study would take a whole book, and indeed, entire books have been devoted to this topic. Copy editing, as a job, involves knowing most of the rules and making personal judgements: where do you conform to the rulebook? Where do you diverge, to protect your unique writing style?

William Strunk Jr.'s Elements of Style is the skinny volume we recommend. In the space of around 110pp, he looks are every imaginable awkward use of the language and, through the means of examples, smooths out the wrinkles.

Here's an example:

Keep related words together.

...and so on! The book is very "dense," meaning Strunk doesn't waffle on. He jumps directly from one sin to another, deals with each in a minimum of words and proceeds to the next. The book is invaluable if you're still in the stage where you're learning to analyze the language ... perhaps trying to figure our which combination of words is actually correct. If you're "playing by ear," this is the book for you.

You can actually download it: Click here to do just that! However, a book is so nice to have on the shelf, and you can also order it from Amazon.com, using the button to your left.

If Elements of Style sounds too dense -- too hard -- then by all means stay on this blog and check out a number of other posts. We're covering the same ground, but we're doing it with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other...!

Here are some more posts which will help you work out what Style is all about, and get it under control:

Being wordy: how much is too much?!

Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

Is there an echo in here?!

Writing with consistency

Writing with absolute clarity

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Is there an echo in here?!

Repeated words, and terms or phrases used too often: Broken Record Syndrome!

"Repeated words" are instances where the same word, or its root, or a version of it, appearing two or more times in the same sentence for no good purpose; or in consecutive sentences; or consecutive paragraphs, if each individual paragraph is very short.

Notice that the words "sentence," "paragraph," and "consecutive" appeared twice each in the previous sentence — and then "sentence" appears FOUR times in this sentence! There are times when it's absolutely correct to use the same word repeatedly ... but many more times when it's an oversight. You're on the lookout for the oversights, and at all times when you're copy editing, you'll be seeing things like this:

splooshing

The other kind of repeated words are known popularly among writers as (!) "purple light words" ... because a certain author will use a word or phrase so often, it gets to be funny, or aggravating, to the reader.

As a general reader you might not have noticed this; on the other hand, you could easily have stumbled over this sloppy writing in pulp fiction, and even in genre fiction which sells well.

Tip: established writers can get away with blue murder! Best-selling authors are allowed to go to press with some pretty crummy writing! However, publishers, editors and agents won't let a new writer get in through the door with bad writing. You'll think to yourself, it's not fair for the best-sellers to get away with bad writing while newcomers are penalized and rejected ... and you'd be right. But these are the unfortunate facts of the writing life, and you have to deal with them in the only way you can: Don't be good. Be GREAT.

The kind of sloppy writing errors you've probably noticed in published books are briefly outlined below. Be vigilant — don't get into these habits. Editors and agents will notice, and before you're established in the industry, they won't forgive you. Watch out for these:

The word "started" will be making readers shudder by page 50. This is slap-dash writing, bereft of good, creative style.

Also, watch out for the dreaded "there was" and "there were" echoes:

I saw there were six scones left...

There were only a few...

Frank sat down, but there were no chairs left afterward...

She told me there were eleven kids...

In the paddock there were nine beautiful horses...

There were several dozen sheep in the meadow...

Across the park, there were at least two hundred trees...

Years ago, there were no high-rise parking lots...

When I was young, there were trackless wastes here...

In the state of NSW there were once bushrangers galore...

There were two big dogs in the garden...

"There were" and "there was" are so easy to use, and therefore overused. It's fine once or twice, but don't indulge in it four times on every page. A professional editor will pick up this in a few pages, and will know you haven't done your homework. Decades ago (the industry was much more affluent in those days), it was financially possible to assign you a copy editor who would go through the manuscript and tidy it up for you. These days, your editor is on the lookout for the rare manuscrip that arrives on his/her desk not needing this work! If you can get it right before submission, your chances of publication are enormously higher.

Use copy editing to find the over-usages, and use good, creative sentence construction to switch words around and achieve variety in your writing.

The next "purple light word" to watch out for is "that" ... and let's play a game. Could the usages of "that" in the following paragraph:

The tiny word "that" can soon come to be like bamboo under the fingernails. Editors will see it used up to 25 times on a single page ... say, 8,000 times during a book-length manuscript ... and this is another sign of careless writing. Be aware of what you're doing; use copy editing to pick out ALL the usages of "that" and weed them down to only what you need. Three or four to a page is fine, and correct. More can swiftly become so aggravating, the repetition of these four letters will be cause of your rejection slips!

So, if you're not going to repeat words, what's the plan? Let's work backwards from the wrong answer! Here is an exercise in not repeating the word "said," which results in literary itching powder:

This little conversation is the exact opposite of using the same word over and over. In an attempt at variety, this writer is using a different verb on every speech line ... and it turns into a "stamp collecting" exercise which shreds the reader's nerves. This can't be called sloppy writing, because the writer probably worked very hard to find a dozen alternatives to "said." The sad fact is, all his/her work was wasted, because the end result is no good.

The trick is to find a happy medium, and find other ways of expressing communication. Be watchful, while copy editing, for passages like this, and try something like this:

Writing with consistency

Consistency throughout the whole story or novel is crucial.

Copy editing is the perfect platform for checking your consistency, and you'll need to be thorough. Have a jotter pad handy, and make notes as you go.

Many words have fairly recently entered the English language, and are not yet set in stone. T-shirt, teeshirt, tee-shirt, tee shirt, for instance. Footwell, or foot well? Stair well or stairwell? Pajamas ... pyjamas. Jump drive ... jumpdrive. Car yard ... caryard, carpark car park, and so on. Bookshop, book store ... parking lot, high rise, hi-rise, highrise.

Many American/Canadian terms are becoming more familiar in British/Aussie/Kiwi English, as the language becomes more cosmopolitan. Aeroplane ... airplane, BBQ, barbecue, motorway, clearway,freeway, peanut butter, peanut paste.

We've reached a point where international boundaries are blurring. It no longer matters which term use use. What matters is being consistent. Whatever you use, use it throughout. Don't swap and change back and forth.

Make your own decision on how "bluejeans" and "teeshirts" will be referred to. Will you be saying sneakers, joggers or trainers to refer to a pair of athletic shoes? Will you be referring to the breakfast food as porridge or oatmeal? Lollies, candies or sweets? Unless you have international characters who are using their own national references in their dialog, you'll need to standardize and stick to it. Copy editing comes to the rescue here.

Try to choose terms which are understood right around the world. For instance, US readers probably won't know what a skip is, in the context of a large rubbish bin ... but thanks to the movies, everyone knows what a dumpster is. They're the same thing, but you might not want to give your story an American flavor by using the US term. Revert to the ubiquitous "bin" and be safe. Do you say garbage, rubbish, or trash?

Which term you choose is much less important than your consistency, and the process of copy editing is the time when you'll grab the whole manuscript by the scruff of its neck and shake it into shape.

Have a jotter to hand and when you read a term which could go either way, make a note. Check your usages when next you see the term. Did you use teeshirt or tee shirt last time? This is a good copy editing habit to get into. As you go on, you can also choose to keep a jotter on the desk and scribble notes as you write. This makes for less editing to do later.

If you're writing speculative fiction or fantasy, you'll be inventing a whole vocabulary to describe the worlds you imagine. Now, it's especially important to be consistent, not only in your terms and how you use them ... but also, in how you spell them. (Again, copy editing to the rescue: it's indispensable.)

We asked Mel Keegan how the ongoing HELLGATE series is kept under control. At this point, it's four big novels, with a couple more to come, a vast cast of characters, two species, speaking two languages, and more locations than Lara Croft could imagine! Over to MK, for insights into how the long-time professional works:

what

The process of creating deep, complex, believable, compelling science fiction and fantasy can become very complicated, very quickly, and it's a copy editing nightmare. None of the terms, places, relationships or alien languages are real. They exist only inside your own head and, soon, in the minds of your readers. If you don't your ducks in a row and keep them there, you'll find yourself contradicting yourself, and readers do notice!

Get a notebook. What's more important ... use it! Later, when you get into the copy editing, you'll be so glad you did.

Writing with absolute clarity

One of the first things an editor or publisher will be looking for in your submission is clarity of writing style.

Conversely ... one of the first things that'll win you a rejection slip is ambiguity!

If your readers have no idea what the heck you mean in a certain passage, you're being ambiguous. When you're editing for yourself, correcting these passages is the toughest of copy editing jobs, because it stands to reason that you always know what you mean. This is where friends and beta readers are indispensable. Ask them to tell you when they just, plain lost the thread of what you were saying. Change the wording so they do understand.

If you're using the right words; and if you've got a lasso on the "killer pronouns" (covered in the basic grammar series of post); and if your sentences are not long and rambling, and hard to follow (covered in the same post-series), you should be pretty darned readable.

It can be difficult to figure out why someone just can't understand what you meant. Have them tell you what they think you meant, and work backwards from there. Copy editing, in this instance, is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. You become a detective, tracking down the reason something makes no sense.

For instance, you might have used a word the reader doesn't understand. You can look upon them contemptuously for not having a good vocabulary ... but this was a potential customer. If your friend or relative who's beta reading for you doesn't known what dystopian and existential and punctilious mean, it's a safe bet that a significant percentage of the readers in the bookshop don't know, either. The trick is to write with flair and style -- not strangling your style or suffocating your formidable vocabulary -- but at the same time remembering that if you hope to earn royalties, readers have to 1) buy the book, 2) understand and enjoy it, and 3) be eager to buy your next book.

If you're not writing for readers, go ahead and be as clever as you like. If you're writing for academia, you can safely assume they know what you're talking about! Of you're writing for the general marketplace, remember that the average reader of the English language is only reading at something like a Grade 8 or 9 level:

Literacy in America

On average, Americans have about 12.5 years of education. However, people read several grades lower than their highest educational achievement, so the average reading level for adult Americans is actually somewhere around eighth or ninth grade. Literacy skills vary widely, so you cannot assume that materials that work in one place or situation will be acceptable in another. They also vary by age and socioeconomic status: people in Medicaid programs tend to read at the fifth grade level or lower and literacy skills for those 65 and older are substantially lower than those for the population as a whole.

In the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), which reports functional literacy in five levels, nearly half of the adults scored in the lowest two levels of literacy. However, 44 percent of people 65 and older scored in the lowest level, and over two thirds of welfare recipients scored in the lowest two levels. According to researchers, the materials in quality reports typically require literacy skills at Level 5.

Select for information on the findings of the

National Adult Literacy Survey

From

http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section3/3_4.htm

If you're hoping to give up the day job and live on your royalties by writing for a niche or genre, it's a good idea to get to know who's reading your work. Also, read your competition! Don't "write down" to the reader, but without a doubt, you must write to be understood. If the reader can't understand you, they'll count the financial investment in your first book as a waste, will dump it at the nearest book-swap, and won't buy your next one.

Another area when you can be difficult to understand is in delicate subject matter, where you're trying to use euphemisms. Too many euphemistic terms, too many poetic, flowery sentences used to get around some sizzling (or gross) scenes, and anyone's writing can jump off the tracks. If the material is so gross, or so sizzling ... does it belong on the page? Credit your readers with imagination, and use the copy editing experience to make the final decisions on what "makes the cut" and what doesn't. Also, bear in mind, no one actually needs to have the physical act of love spelled out in every last detail; we've all known how it goes since about the age of seven! If you're uncomfortable with the material, do what writers used to do in the days before steamy fiction was acceptable. Leave two blank lines and cut to the next scene! Every reader knows exactly what happened during those blank lines, and you can duck the subject neatly, and hence avoid being so foggy and vague, readers were confused. Copy editing is the time to make this artistic decision.

Similarly, you must decide what level of violence you want to include. being realistic is one thing, but violence can go way over the top, and again, you're wading knee-deep in euphemisms. Same story: use your copy editing process to decide what's going to land on the page and what gets cut.

Occasionally, you'll discover (all writers do!) that when you come back to something you wrote six months ago, and read it back, YOU have no idea, none at all, what you meant in a particular passage. It's the strangest feeling, to be reading your own novel and lose the thread. If you were knitting, they would say you had dropped a stitch. Now, you can only look at the material directly before the problem, and directly after, see if you can infer the meaning ... and if you can't, put a line through the paragraph that went wool-gathering. You might need to construct bridging material to close the narrative back up. You can also discover perfect flow, with the woolly paragraph(s) deleted. You're doing the copy editing here ... you're in charge!

Punctuation ... made simple!

The fiddling little details we're looking at on this post are all about English punctuation. German, French, Spanish — every language has its own rules. Correct punctuation in English is a lot easier than the systems of grammar and punctuation used by some other languages, so you're already in luck, being a 'native' speaker.

(Incidentally, if you're speaking English as a second language, this page will be very helpful to you. We're about to demystify the whole subject of English punctuation, and this information is just as useful when you're trying to work out what in the world these weird English-speakers are talking about now! Stay with us.)

Let's make a start. Have a look at the nightmare, above left! That's original Latin. Punctuation? You're on your own! Which is one reason ancient literature isn't "available" to the general public until it's been fully translated ... meaning, "hammered into sensible English -- and punctuated!

Take another look at this:

It's not just the spaces between the words which were removed, to simulate Ancient Greek. You'll notice we took out a whole lot more. In fact, we took out everything that makes language sensible to today's readers:

Each of these is called a punctuation mark, also known as a punctuation point, or a punctuation symbol. Each mark performs a specific job, and there are others, too, used so commonly in English that the written language won't 'go' without them. Here are some more:

You're certainly familiar with them. You use them every day in emails, to wink at people, look shocked, and so on...

:-) ;-( :-o :-P

The 'emoticon' symbols were actually pressganged by the smiley-face people, to convey facial expressions, but their real job ... the function for which they were invented, long ago ... was to break up written language. To make it easier to read.

Correct punctuation revolves around putting these marks in the right places in your written work, so let's start with a close-up look at what each mark does.

THE FULL STOP, OR PERIOD
Looks like this: [ . ]
It has two basic jobs...

FIRST JOB:
Brings a sentence to a complete, dead STOP, like this[.]

Correct punctuation is important. Somebody stole the telescope. Nobody cared about the old tree. Albert was eaten by a lion. The lion later threw up. Cats tend to throw up on carpets. Astronauts try not to throw up in their helmets. This example is getting gross.

SECOND JOB:
Shows where a contraction has taken place. Like this

Mr. = mister
Mrs. = missus
Fr. = Father
Dr. = Doctor
St. = Street and Saint
Cr. = Crescent
Crt. = Court
Mt. = Mount
Sr. = Senior
Jr. = Junior
Col. = Colonel.
1st. = first
2nd. = second
hrs. = hours
kms. = kilometers

CAPITALIZATION
Looks like this: [ A,B,C ]
Its job -- come on guys, you know your alphabet!

Shows where a new sentence STARTS. Shows what is the NAME of a person, like John or Sally, or the name of a place, like London and New York. (There are other uses, but this is Basic Punctuation. Ground rules first; get fancy later.)

COMMA
Looks like this: [ , ]
It's job...

Breaks up sentences into 'bite size chunks,' to make them easier to understand. (How and why sentences are broken up into those chunks is all about grammar. We'll look at that elsewhere.) For now ... this is what commas do! Like this:

Correct punctuation, if anyone is interested, isn't hard to learn.

Half a mile from home, the car broke down.

The shop had run out of purple paint, but said they could reorder.

Two lads from Bendigo, fighting in the carpark, were subsequently arrested.

The dogs and cats fought, fang and claw, till they were broken up.

The tree was old, massive, beautiful, and I wished they hadn't cut it down.

Aunt Marie said she was German, or was it Austrian? I forget.

The American Flag, known in that country as 'Old Glory,' is covered in stripes. Also stars.

Meanwhile, the Chinese flag is so red, it looks a lot like a fire engine.

Speaking of which, has anyone checked the price of plane tickets lately?

Correct punctuation, like a gift from Hermes, makes literature readable!

ALSO...
Commas are used in geographical locations, like this:

London, England. Paris, France. Sydney, Australia. Florence, Italy. Mos Eisley, Tatooine. Hobbiton, The Shire.

QUESTION MARK
Looks like this: [ ? ]
It's job...

Shows the end of a question, either spoken or narrative; shows exactly where the voice pitches up at the very end of the wording of a question. Like this:

Why can't Butch have a romp off the leash?

Is there doctor in the house?

Where will I find the old maple syrup in the duct-taped bottle?

Anyone know where Hugh Jackman was born?

Isn't he an Aussie — or is he a Kiwi?

Have you seen the new show on TV?

Did anyone bother to read my blog yesterday?

Hey, am I bleeding?

Good grief, am I missing Doctor Who, is it on already?

Does anyone understand a word I'm saying?

Can somebody show me the correct punctuation for this?

Softly, softly, came the night, but where was the highwayman?

John looked into the shed. Was the light switch broken? No, the power was out.

The tide had raged five miles upriver. Had the sandbags held? Rachel could only hope.

Summer almost always brought bushfires. Would this year be different?

Correct punctuation is necessary. Will anyone trouble to learn it?

APOSTROPHE
Looks like this: [ ' ]
It has two basic jobs...

FIRST JOB:
Shows possession, or how something is owned. A thing can be owned by one person, or by two or more people, and (makes you shudder, but sink your teeth into this) the "apostrophe of possession" changes position to indicate whether that possession is singular or plural!

It works like this:
SINGULAR: John's dog. Sally's chapeaux. Mom's taxi. Bobby's worst habit. Heaven's waiting room. The burger's grease. My yarn store's manager. Dad's pet peeve. Jim's famous foibles. Frank's worst disaster. America's oil crisis. His master's voice. Her mother's anger. Our grandfather's will. Suzie's correct punctuation stunned us all.

PLURAL: The kids' bags. The actors' voices. The pilots' aircraft. The tourists' worst fears. Our gymnasts' Olympic dreams. Their parents' employment. The musicians' last gig. Our cats' gardens. Their dogs' exercise. The trees' branches. The boys' correct punctuation was greatly appreciated.

SECOND JOB:
Shows where a contraction occurs. In English, we frequently mash words together to make shorter (more speakable) versions of them. These 'contractions' are indicated by an apostrophe, which shows up where letters have been removed. Like this:

Is not = isn't.
Are not = aren't.
Do not = don't
Can not = can't.
Could not = couldn't.
Had not = hadn't.
Should not = shouldn't.
Shall not = shan't.
Was not = wasn't.
Were not = weren't.
Have not = haven't.
Might not =mightn't
I am = I'm.
You are = you're.
He/she is = he's/she's
I will be = I'll be
You will be = you'll be.
We are = we're.
They are = they're.
We will be = we'll be.
They will = they'll.
These will = these'll.
He is = he's.
She is = she's.
You would = you'd
I would = I'd
She/he would = she'd/he'd
We would = we'd
There is = there's.
There is not = there isn't.
There are = there're.
There will be = there'll be.
There are not = there aren't.
This will = this'll.
This will not= this won't.

SPEECH MARKS
Looks like this: [ US = "/", UK = '/' ]
It's job...

Shows the beginning and end of dialog. The marks enclose only the actual words. Notice how a comma appears at the end of speech, inside the second speech mark — unless the whole sentence ends along the the dialog! If both the sentence and the dialog end together, you'd use a full stop. Like this:

"I can't do that," Bobby grumbled.

"Now," said the guard, "bring me my sword."

The barbarian demanded shrewdly, "Where lies the castle?"

The old man coughed and said, "To whom does this garbage belong?"

"Can I help you, madam?" the waiter asked with feigned politeness.

The assistant blanched, croaked, "Help!" And promptly fainted.

"Correct punctuation," said Miss Prim, "will score you three extra points!"

"If I could do that," he said hotly, "I wouldn't be here in the first place."

EXCLAMATION MARK
Looks like this: [ ! ]
It's job...

Shows where an exclamation has been made. Like this:

"Get the hell out of my dadblasted cabbage patch!"

"The blasted rabbit just ate all my carrots!

"Holey moley!"

Smash! The glass shattered out of the window.

"Whew! I thought you people were done for!"

"A plane just crashed! Can you hear me? The engines exploded!"

With a massive thuddd! the warehouse doors rolled down and locked.

Jim was dying! What was I going to do?

He cared nothing at all about correct punctuation! I was appalled.

"Correct punctuation, ya varmint? I hate all kinds of punctuation!" Yosemite Sam was steaming mad.

PARENTHESIS (brackets)
Looks like this: [ ( / ) ]
Their job...

In creative writing, is used to insert a related idea into an existing sentence. Can also be used in formatting documents, to separate indicators, such as numbers, out from the text. Use them like this:

(1) Under no circumstances whatsoever will there be tarryhooting in the hallways. (2) There will be absolutely no yelling on the stairs unless, or until, (3) a fire has broken out, and it had better be a big one!

a) The restoration of the Grand Hall
b) Studies regarding the foundations
c) Concrete quotes from local companies
ci) other concrete quotes
cii) alternatives to concrete
ciii) consequences of using alternatives

And while I'm on the subject of correct punctuation (which should be high on any writer's agenda), let me just add one more point.

Sonny was a daughter of the Earth (also of Rosie and Bob, but everyone knew that), and she wanted to do something about the environment.

Zipping down the freeway much too fast (Jack would obviously have disagreed), the driver missed the last, long curve and plowed into the hay field.

The 747 is a monument to modern engineering (even if it has played a terrible part in the destruction of the atmosphere), and will be honored with a museum.

The year before Rick was born, Martin (so his mother always swore), spent one long, hot summer in the village ... make of it what you will!

The ocean broke higher up the beach every year, and even within Judy's lifespan (and that of her mother, which had been recorded in so many journals), the changes in the shoreline were obvious.

Save for the efforts of the local Community Action group (we'll be getting to them later, with a special award), the whole area would have been devastated.

Just before Christmas, when the nights are longest and coldest (for some reason, my favorite time of the year! I love winter), my family gets together at the old house in Maine.

Correct punctuation (said Miss Prim with a look on her face that made you want to feed her the inkwell), was the most important thing she knew. We all decided she needed to get out more.

ELLIPSIS
Looks like this: [ ... ]
Its job...

Used to show where text is missing; also used to indicate where a speaker has paused, or hesitated. Can also be used to do the job of parentheses (brackets). Like this:

Mr. Carmody stated that unless the changes in the legislation were ... comprehensive and prompt, further action would be undertaken.

The river has been in gradual decline since the ... drought of the 1970s.

Most schools report an increase in the unruly behavior of ... students in general.

"I don't know," she said slowly, thinking over every word, "but I'd have to guess ... maybe seventeen at the most."

He gazed at the distant, blue line of the hills. "They remind me of home, and sometimes I ... I get a little sad." "Your house feels like home. Or ... like my home used to be," he admitted. She spoke through a rush of tears. "He was my friend for eight years, and ... okay, he was a dog, but don't you dare say only a dog!" Mary and Jean were in the backyard ... the far backyard, where the willows overhung the river ... and he heard the distant murmur of their voices.

The radio was playing quietly ... songs of another era, another people, her own folk ... but she was no longer listening.

She called herself Delilah ... perhaps like the traitorous wife in that only song, sung by Tom Jones? ... yet one felt the goodness inside her.

One misses the simple things in life ... like correct punctuation.

SEMI COLON
Looks like this: [ ; ]
Its job...

Breaks up items in a list — replaces the words 'and' and 'but' (which are called conjunctions because they link together various ideas). The 'lists' of things that can be separated out by the semi-colon can also include ideas, the narrator's thoughts, and parts of the sentence. Like this:

He was from Austria, in the mountain country; I never knew him before he arrived in San Francisco.

Five gold rings; four mocking birds; three French hens; two turtle doves, but unfortunately the partridges were out of stock at the Christmas tree store, and won't be available till the January truck arrives.

The launch of the first starship of Earth was greeted with mixed reactions; for myself, I was thrilled — my brother scorned it.

Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World; it's also true that Portuguese money was integral to the voyage.

Shadows and highlights; confused illumination from the overheads; muted, stormy daylight from the filthy windows, all gave her little chance to see the wolf properly before he showed himself.

Roger could hardly believe it; sheer incredulity stopped him in his tracks.

Correct punctuation had vanished from literature; it was sorely missed.

FULL COLON
Looks like this: [ : ]
Its job...

Most often used in formatting to indicate the time, also to separate out 'bullet points' in numbered and categorized lists. In creative writing, is used for emphasis, indicating that a summary, or conclusion, or emphatic statement follows right after it. Like this:

Part Two: The Creek and Cherokee Peoples

14d: Rights and responsibilities of elected members.

I don't know much about the situation, but I can tell you this: Susan is a certified, card-carrying idiot.

Like a meteor, the spaceplane plunged into the atmosphere, streaming coolant from smashed engines: she was done for, long before the inevitable impact.

The fear of rats had haunted him since childhood, and he had always known he must face it: confront it, once and for all, and defeat it.

Religion has been called the 'opiate of the masses,' and here is the problem: they were doped out of their wits on it when they turned on Europe's women and burned thousands of them as witches.

He was a freak of nature: no other human in the world could run so fast.

The bottom line is this: if you don't get the hang of correct punctuation, it will be very difficult to find a professional publisher to take you on.

EMRULE (long dash, or double-dash)
Looks like this: [ — or -- ]
Its job...

Joins ideas that are directly related; is used to insert a related idea into an existing sentence instead of using parentheses (brackets, which can be intrusive). Can also indicate where text or dialog is missing, especially at the end of a line of dialog that has been cut off. Like this:

She ran out of the mill as if the devil himself were behind her — and for all she knew, he might have been.

The two boys had just stepped off the train — dressed in their Sunday best and looking faintly ridiculous among the sheep shearers.

Her name was Mavis — God, what a name!

My favorite day was always Sunday — it was the only day we got to sleep in.

Johnny was half-Mexican — his mother, so people said, had made her way north from a tiny town in Tijuana.

North of the Orkney Islands — where the North Sea is wide and wild — a small boat can be sunk without trace.

Marianna had never liked Richard — he was too loud and obnoxious — but she loved his brother at first sight.

Coming around the corner — where the old church hunched like a troll cast in granite — the wolf stopped to scent the air.

"Wait for me," he panted, "I can't —"

"Phonecall for you," Alan shouted, "It sounds like —"

Thunder rolled down the valley for long minutes, and then — rain, as I had never seen rain before.

"Correct punctuation — ha! You might as well say 'fly to the Moon.' He's not paying attention."

HYPHEN (short dash)
Looks like this: [ - ]
Its job...

Glues words together to make 'superwords' ... splits them apart at the ends of lines to make them appear more attractive in a typeset. (There are more uses, which we'll look at elsewhere. For now, the basics will suffice.) Like this:

Mother-in-law
Wil-o'-the-wisp
jack-o'-lantern
left-of-center
heavily-bearded guy
well-tempered trumpet
painted-on tattoos
text-based websites
character-driven plots
pug-nosed charm
nasty-minded people
fan-damn-tastic! (slang)
un-damn-believable (slang)
happy-go-lucky
heavy-handed justice

Grammar: the absolute basics --

Get this much "down" if you do nothing else!

We've put the essential ground rules in a nutshell. Be aware, there's more ... there's a lot more ... but you should find more than enough right here to get you on the right track, and if you do need more, we'll recommend some excellent reference books. (If this were soccer, you'd know the size and shape of the field, length of game, number of players, how to score and maybe two offside rules. Of course there's more — but you might not need it!)

What's in this post?
Is it singular, or are they plural? Help
If it was ... if it were ...? What goes on here?
Do I say I, or me?
Either, or, neither, nor ...say, what?
Can, may or might? And what's the diff?
Possession: adventures with the Dreaded Apostrophe
Pluralizing: more misadventures with the Apostrophe
It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?
Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?
Whose or who's or whose's? A little help here!
Controlling pronouns before they run berserk
Splicing together phrases and clauses to make sentences
Subjects, objects ... and what's this predicate business?
That or which ... which is it?
On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?
Understand the difference between them, and it's simple:

It's is a contraction. It's short for it+is. You use It's to say, "It's a beautiful day;" "it's a crying shame;" "Mike said it's in the cupboard;" "Jim's bike? It's broken;" "it's being mended;" "it's got two flat tires." "It's not a good idea." "It's time for tea." "It's too late for talking." "Then, it's all over?" "But it's only just started!"

Its shows possession: my, your, his, her, our, their ... its. Notice, NONE of the words showing possession have an apostrophe. Not one of them. So, it's easy to tell when to use Its, because it has no apostrophe. Like this:

"Its paint was cracked." "She had a bike, but its wheel was buckled." "Jim said its door was yellow." "Yes, but its knob was green." "Its wires were burned out." "Its tail feathers are white." "Its aroma was delicious." "The song was lovely, its melody soared." (In these examples, Its is standing in for the noun. A house, a door, a bike, a radio, a bird, a pot of soup; a song.)

Its' is a typographical error. Never use it, because it doesn't mean anything at all. It's the ultimate booboo: gibberish. A mix-up between your fingers and the keys. 'Nuff said.

Pluralizing: billboard's ... billboards ... hotdog's ... hotdogs ... house's ... houses ... help!

More fun with the apostrophe. Relax: it's easy. You already know, after reading #1, that the apostrophe shows possession. What is does NOT show #151 not ever! -- is the plural, of anything! (Singular is one of something; plural is two or more.) All you have to do, to avoid this incredibly common gaff is, never, never use the apostrophe when you mean "two or more." Like this:

Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?

All three are correct, in context. When you're copy editing, all you need to do is make sure the right word is used for the right context. Fortunately, it's so easy!

Their is a possessive pronoun. (A pronoun is a word which stands in, like an understudy, for a noun. 'It' can be the standin for a lamp, an elephant, and the planet Mars. 'She' can be the standin for two year old Gemma, your great-grandmom, and the starship Enterprise. 'They' can be used to stand for a bunch of flowers, ten battleships, and the Hell's Angels. Pronouns are the most flexible words in the language, and some of them show how a noun "owns" or "possesses" something. "The girl's bike = her bike." "Jim's book = his book." "The car's wheels = its wheels." "The boys' exams = their exams." The personal pronouns in this particular word list are "my, your, his, her, its, our, and their." Simply add a noun to any of them, and you can't go wrong.) So, their is only ever (ever!) used to show how a bunch of people or things "possess" something else. Stick to this, and you can't go wrong. "Their religion." "Their tourism industry." "Their Size 14 dresses." "Their industrial-strength titanium frames." "Their tiny, delicate petals." "Their warped camshafts." "Their photon torpedo banks." "Their painted fingernails." Easy.

There is a word with two jobs.

The first job is where "there" is used as a preposition. (Prepositions are words which show the position of objects in space. Under, over, in(side) out(side), before, behind, between, above, below, here ... there.) So, "The football stopped over there." "Our house is there, on the corner." "There are the girls." "The frog was there, on the rock." "I saw him standing there." "She said, 'There it is, under the table." He answered, 'I don't see it there.'" "'But the book is there,' she insisted. 'I put it there!'" "Jim saw the Klingons, hiding in wait there." So, in this context, use There to show the position of objects in space. Never use "their" or "they're," and you can't go wrong.

Second job performed by "there" ... it shows the existence of things. Like this:

There is; there are; there were; there will be; there aren't any; there are six; there were 43; there haven't been any since May; there won't be any until August; there isn't a chance; there can't be a sound; there wasn't any trace; there is a whole load of them; there is at least a million; there was one when I got here. So, in this context use there only (only!) to show the existence of things.

They're is a contraction. It's short for they+are. "They're" is never (never!) used for any other purpose. Stick to this, and you'll be right ever time. Like this:

"They're on their way home, I see them there on the road." "They said they're coming back, as soon as their car is fixed." "I talked to Jack and Sam, they're finished the job." "We called them last night, they're on the morning train." "The two dogs are fighting, they're going to get hurt this time." "Six cars are racing on the road, they're driven by maniacs." "Four flights have been cancelled today, they're waiting for fog to clear." "Daniel and Jack won't be back tonight, they're busy." "Their plane is late, so they're going to take a cab home, we don't have to wait there."

Attack of the killer pronouns!

Take a look at these sentences. Each contains one pronoun and two or three nous. The problem is, you're left guessing which of the nouns the pronoun stands in for, and the sentences become ambiguous. One of the most important copy editing jobs is to watch out for ambiguity, turn the muddy into the clear. Pronouns can get you into a lot of trouble! Like this:

Try this:

The trick is to see the ambiguity, and then look for ways to either invert the sentence to make the potential for ambiguity go away; you can also replace the pronoun with a similar word which will do the job just as well, and prevent over-use of the original noun. Copy editing give you the opportunity to revise to your heart's content. (In the examples above, the car = the vehicle; home = the building; lunch = his meal; the crate = the heavy box; the white cat = the Persian. In the other examples, the sentences have been turned inside out to weed out the potential for killer pronouns.

Subjects and Objects: it's war!

Every sentence has a subject. If it doesn't have a subject, it's not a sentence! (Put your copy editing hat on here.) The 'subject' of a sentence is the entity that performs the verb. Think of the subject as the owner of the verb. Like this:

First step: pick out the verbs. (A verb is an 'action' word. It can be the only word in the entire sentence that indicates what is actually HAPPENING! In the examples above, the verbs are...

Sings ... running ... wants ... jumped ... arrived ... worked ... terrorized ... arrested.

(NOTE: the verbs are in different tenses, but don't worry about this. They're all verbs, and at this moment, that's what counts.)

Now, figure out who's performing each verb. Who owns it?

The boy ... The elderly man ... A beat-up red car ... A small brown puppy with big, bright eyes ... Mother's cat, a young Persian called Nostradamus ... Two girls from Nebraska ... A regiment of door-to-door salesmen ... Six badly behaved children with execrable manners ... Eight people.

Notice how subjects can be simple ("The boy" and "eight people"), and either singular or plural. The subject can be a whole bunch of people ("A regiment") ... and the subject can get complicated, as in the case of Nostradamus!

The subject of the sentence is all the words used to describe the subject, gathered together:

These, above, are not sentences, even though they're long. They're fragments. To make a sentence, you need add a verb:

(Do you still have your copy editing hat on? Good!) Now, what about the object of a sentence. Not all sentences have objects. Very short ones can be complete without them:

But the instant these short, choppy little sentences start to grow and express more ... you get an object. The object is the entity or object that is affected by the verb. It has the verb performed on it, or done to it. Like this:

In the above examples, the verbs are:

arrived ... smashed ... escaped ... struggled-to-catch ... win ... parked ... stood ... crying-out.

And if you're looking for the subject, it's easy now: the subjects of these simple sentences are the parts that are NOT the verbs or the objects! (Jack and Daniel ... the little girl ... five puppies ... Two policemen ... Charles ... The driver of a yellow Gogomobile ... the Gogomobile ... Stockton.

So far, so good. Look for the verb; whatever, or whoever performs ("owns") the verb is the subject, and whatever gets the verb wreaked upon it is the object. The copy editing process is coming along fine.

Now things get interesting. There's a good deal more material involved in long, complicated sentences, and you have to make absolutely sure all this material is properly tagged and organized. If you get lazy and inattentive, you can end up with hilarious, fall-down-laughing copy editing results, like this:

The trick is simply to arrange the sentence to keep all the appropriate material gathered together. While you're learning, go through a sentence and "tag" the various parts. Underline the verb, highlight the subject, and then when you've identified the object, round up all the material belong to it:

A comb with celluloid teeth ... a table with antique legs ... a house with a nasty case of termites ... a drill with a three-meter cord ... a guitar with bright steel pegs.

The other subject/object battle you can easily get into while copy editing is this: in long sentences, a fight can develop over who owns the verb. When sentences become very long and complex, you can find yourself hunting around trying to sort out who owns what. The easiest "fix" for this malady is to break the sentence down into two, three or even more smaller ones. Shorter sentences are easier to control ... often, they're also easier to read, and they can pack a "punch" in the narrative, which longer, flowing sentences don't have. This is where copy editing can actually cross back over and line into creative writing. The border between the two blurs out.

For example, here's a long, rambling sentence, and the copy editing cure for it:

A good distance offshore, where the water becomes very deep because the continental shelf drops off into the abyss, two small trawlers (which had, an hour before, put out of the port of San Cristobal) set their nets, with the obvious intention of catching any assortment of the shallow-water pelagic fish which abound in those seas, when the sky darkened with thunderclouds and a storm came up, so suddenly and so violently — with massive winds and a barrage of hail — that both the boats were half swamped before the captains could secure them, and only one skipper could broadcast a Mayday signal over the shortwave ahead of the predictable disaster.

Structurally, the sentence is sound, but it rambles from one topic to another, and another: the coastline, the trawlers, the fishing grounds, the storm, the disaster. In the middle of such a sentence, you can struggle to see who or what owns which verb, and it's all too easy to get into a muddle. Good copy editing should always be performed with the reader in mind, not the writer! Make the story easy to understand, and people will stay with you, keep reading and buy your next book!

Try this:

A good distance offshore, the water becomes very deep because the continental shelf drops off into the abyss. Two small trawlers had, an hour before, put out of the port of San Cristobal. They set their nets, with the obvious intention of catching any assortment of the shallow-water pelagic fish which abound in those seas. The sky darkened with thunderclouds and a storm came up, suddenly and violently, with massive winds and a barrage of hail. Both boats were half swamped before the captains could secure them, and only one skipper could broadcast a Mayday signal over the shortwave ahead of the predictable disaster.

In the second "take" on the same material, it's split up into five sentences. The copy editing was very effective. The material is not easier to read, and much easier to control. Subjects and objects are easier to pick out. Be vigilant: by all means write in fluid sentences which sound good in the ear, but ... know when enough is enough! Take pity on your readers.

There is one more rambling-sentence problem which we'll touch on here, and cover properly elsewhere. It's called the "run-on" sentence, and this is something you need to be keenly aware of, so that you can steer well clear if it. The "run-on" is a long, long sentence which has no business being a sentence at all. It's actually several shorter sentences which the writer has spliced together with commas and semi-colons, in order to simulate the "sound" of fluid sentence construction. In fact, the sentences have nothing to do with each other and should be separate.

In the following example, each sentence is complete, even though some of them are short and choppy. They're also unconnected! You can glue the whole lot together with comms, semi-colons and conjunctions (the "ands" and "buts"), however ... you shouldn't, because these sentences address different topics:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town. The sun was hot. Charlotteville was on the horizon. A tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well. James was sweating in the heavy tunic. Worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left. With an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune. The horses were tired, and in need of rest.

Here it is as a run-on sentence. This is what you DON'T want to to:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town, the sun was hot, Charlotteville was on the horizon, a tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well, and James was sweating in the heavy tunic — worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left, and with an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune, and the horses were tired, and in need of rest.

You can glue anything together with the glue of punctuation and conjunctions, but in many instaces, you should't. The trick is to split up the material and keep topics together. Identify your subjects, objects and verbs, and keep them under control. This is better:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town where the sun was hot, making James sweat in the heavy tunic. The horses were tired, and in need of rest. Worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left, but Charlotteville was on the horizon. A tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well, and with an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune.

We'll be looking at run-ons in greater detail in another post, but for now ths example will give you a good grasp of what you want to do ... and what you don't!

That ... or which ...? So, which is it?

At least in this contexthis one is an easy fix. (NOTE: there are many and complex rules governing "that" and "which," but in this case ... trying to work out which one to use, when they seem at first glance to be interchangeable! ... it's not so complex. At this moment, with this particular problem, you're hunting for a "five minute fix" to solve the "that/which battle" -- you only need to know one rule. Elsewhere on the site, we'll examine clauses, and subordinate clauses and a lot of material which can get fairly confusing. The fact is, however, when you just need a "that/which quick-fix," you don't want all the rest. For now, scoop the icing off the top; come back for the rest of the cake later.)

"That" and "Which" have many uses in English. One of their jobs is to glue sentences together in a specific ways. Both of them take short, choppy, awkward, ugly sentences and make them longer, smoother sentences. However, THAT and WHICH are used in different ways, in different contexts. They're not interchangeable at all! So ... which would you use, and when, and why?

Take a look at these examples.

All the above examples use WHICH. The examples below use THAT. Take a look at them, then we'll work out the rule:

Notice, in the first set of examples, two awkward little sentences have been glued together to form one better-sounding sentence, using WHICH. They may sound better when conjointed with WHICH ... but they are actually complete and coherent on their own. Read them through again... "Bats are amazing creatures." This makes perfect sense, and the sentence is complete, like "He had an ace up his sleeve." And "Don't overlook the force of the wind." The sentence comes to a full stop -- done. It's followed by another short sentence with amplifies it, but it'll stand on its own. WHICH is used to turn two choppy, awkward little sentences into one smooth sentence.

Notice, in the second set of examples, two concepts are joined using THAT ... but neither concept is a complete sentence on its own. Like this:

"He used the kind of language" is not a complete sentence. "It would get anyone slapped" is a sentence, but it has an "it" in there, and the "it" makes the sentence utterly ambiguous, if it's separated from the previous sentence fragment and taken out of context. "It" could be face-pulling, a rude gesture, a teeshirt with a crude cartoon, bad behavior -- or bad language. You would use THAT to join a sentence fragment (it's a fagment because it won't stand on its own as a sentence without more added) and a qualifying concept.

"The huge black dog" is not a sentence, but a fragment, like "The only science," and "It could only be the car" and especially, "Mrs. Bailey made more tea, but it was a single lingering lamington" ...! Each of these incomplete fragments needs to be welded to another, qualifying concept, in order to make proper sense. The glue you use to stick them together is WHICH."

(CAVEAT: this is the quick fix! There's a lot more to "that" and "which" than can be covered here, but by far the most common mistake is in mixing them up when you're looking for the right glue to stick short, choppy sentences together. With a firm grasp of this one rule about the that/which battles, you'll about the vast majority of errors. Bookmark this page and return when you need full, in-depth information. Or, subscribe to our newsletter. It's free, and every week or two we'll tell you which pages just went on line at Write Your Novel, detailing which pesky subjects. Visit us again when what you need is "up" ...!)

On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

This at least is simple. Once you see the rule, all errors vanish, never to return. In the course of your copy editing, watch out for two kinds of sentences which contain parentheses (brackets):

1) The sentence is entirely inside the brackets;
2) The sentence is partly inside, partly outside the brackets.

The rule is this: If ALL the sentence is inside the brackets ... so is the punctuation. If part of the sentence is OUTSIDE the brackets, so is the punctuation. Like this:

Johnny had been in Mexico (working for his Uncle Joe), for six months.

(For some reason, Barbara had never thought of this.)

The mountains (up as far as the Swiss Alps) were white with snow.

(Seven dollars seemed like too much to pay.)

If wishes were horses (as my grandpa used to say), we'd all be cowboys.

(Jim would have preferred to see the Clint Eastwood movie, but decided not to say so.)

And now, with sounds of evil chuckling:
Turn page to Grammar: when to break ALL the rules!

Grammar? Who in the heck needs it, anyway?

Grammar...without it, the language unravels!

Grammar. What in the world is it? You certainly can't see it, touch, smell or taste it. But you hear it, and the worse it is, the more of it you seem to hear! Bad grammar is at the root of a lot of jokes. When spoken language goes ridiculously wrong, humor of the unintentional kind won't be far behind.

On the other hand, good grammar is one of a small handful of factors which have, for centuries, set the aristocracy apart from the rest of mankind. Not long ago, only the sons of rich men could go to school. Many were taught by monks ... girls were rarely taught at all. Literacy was the privilege of the wealthy and scholarly. Grammar — being the framework on which every word we speak is hung — was one of the qualities peculiar to ladies and gentlemen, because only they were given the opportunity to learn it.

Like anything else that is rare, proper language, good grammar, soon became a status symbol. You could be shabby, not own a horse, much less a piece of land, but so long as you spoke well, the classes of the nobility would accept you into their ranks. You were 'people like us,' or PLU. It was an elite club, where the entry card was your ability to use the language properly. And it all begins with grammar.

In movies, we get a big laugh out of the "local yokel." In the street, face to face with friends and acquaintances, we tend to overlook lapses in grammar. The spoken word is gone in a heartbeat; who remembers? But what a writer commits to paper achieves a kind of immortality...

In other words, your booboos will come back to haunt you! As an aspiring writer, you have one big goal: to impress the heck out of editors, agents and publishers. If you can impress them enough, they'll publish your work, and you'll earn. Eventually, you'll earn enough to give up the day job and write for a living.

One of the criteria on which you'll be judged — on page one of your submission! — is your grammar. You can't afford to make any, or many mistakes. If your creativity is "off the scale," you'll be forgiven for the odd lapse here and there; an editor will straighten out a few mistakes in grammar. However, if you make too many of these lapses, the editor, agent or publisher won't keep on reading your manuscript for long enough to discover how brilliant your fiction really is.

There is only one solution to this problem. Good grammar. Either learn it yourself, or recruit your friends (if you do conscript friends, make very sure they know what they're doing ... if they don't, the manuscript will simply be full of their errors, instead of yours). The third option is to pay for professional editing, and although you can certainly do this, please do read our caution, on the freelance editing page. Of you haven't yet read it, go there and scan it now ... this page will be here when you come back!

For the purpose of this page, then, we'll assume you've made the commitment to being the consummate professional. It's not a five-minute journey from "wannabe" to "best-seller," but the trip can be a lot of fun. No one ever said any of it had to be boring.

So: you're on this page to get a stranglehold on the gentle art of grammar. Right? Right.

In that case, let's grab the fundamentals and throttle them!

Turn page to
Correct Grammar: a framework to which everything else is pegged

The global edit: writing and editing working in tandem

You've heard the phrase, 'Think global, act local.' It's the same thing in this context. When you read a story, you're always reading locally, because your attention can only ever be focused on the paragraph or even sentence you're digesting at this exact moment. When we ask you to edit globally, it's the exact opposite...

You look at the story (the plot) as a whole. Writing and editing merge at this point. The writer and the editor become the same person. By the time you read this page, you'll have written enough that you feel comfortable writing. And editing is probably something you've done unconsciously. It's nothing new to you. Very few surprises are about to be sprung —

It is, however, time the formalize the process. Nail it down tight, by understanding how and why it works. In the early days, writing and editing is very much about trial and error. You do your best work, show it to people, and listen keenly to how they respond. Now, friends and family will seldom tell you if a piece was poorly written, boring, or full of mistakes! So deliberately ask for feedback, constructive criticism ... and don't take offence when you get what you asked for. Use it. Learn

The first job of editing you're going to do is to look at the story line as a whole, and make sure it makes sense. This sounds almost ridiculously easy, but ... it's not! Some absolutely astonishing disasters have happened because global editing was overlooked or forgotten. For instance, a character's name changes in the middle of the book. It's subtle: MacCready become McCready. No one noticed till after the book was printed. Ouch! Or, Helen started out blonde in the first chapter, but by Chapter Nine she's being describes as having 'lustrous, mahogany tresses.' Ooops. Writing and editing can be a minefield. The writer is usually wafting above the mantraps, free of the constraints of gravity, while the editor shuffles along on hands and knees with a stick, locating and defusing the mines!

Another obvious mistake is to have a character who started out as an Aussie from Victoria, and then name a town in New South Wales as his home, when he tells his story to a new friend, 240 pages later. Here's a beauty: a dog who started the book as a Husky turns into a Malamute by Chapter Six. The two dogs are both Arctic breeds, but very different. In the business of writing and editing, it's the extraordinary author who has a memory good enough to carry every facet of every character and situation. The editor is the one who saves the day.

A subtle mistake is when a character's eyes turn from blue to brown, or brown to green. A whopper of a mistake is to forget that a character was killed in Chapter 2, and have him/her reappear 500 pages later. This is so obvious, it rarely happens; but what happens much more often is that a writer will forget when a character was very badly injured, and allow insufficient time for him/her to heal up, before they're suddenly out there kicking butt again. This error happens when, in a long novel with a lot of action, several hundred pages have been written, depicting a series of intense events. The problem is, all the events (all 400pp of them!) took place over a three-day period. Billy Bob, whose pelvis and both legs were broken just before all hell bust loose, should still be heavily medicated for intense pain, and weeks away from being able to get back on a superbike and hit the road. In writing and editing, 400pp doesn't mean a long time; it just means some heavily documented events.

A global edit has to be meticulous. You either remember or (better) jot down physical descriptions of the characters, plus where they're from, who they're married to, who's widowed, who has kids, how old they are ...! You write thumbnail biographies. You also keep a check on who's hurt, who's dead ... who's a Persian and who's a Siamese. Writing and editing is always meticulous, but nowhere more so than in this process, which is often skipped. As the saying goes, that's how accidents happen.

Bear in mind that writing and editing a full-length book will take months, possibly even years. Over that much time, you can't carry thousands of tiny details in your memory. In any case, why would you want to? Have a notebook, write things down. You'll be amazed how much work this simple tip will save you in years, and projects, to come.

We asked the maestro, Mel Keegan, to nominate the best process, and here's the word:

"I don't have limitless time to devote to writing (I wish I did!) so I tend to be thorough, and not have to backtrack. The first thing I do is think the story line through from beginning to end, and, when I'm pretty much satisfied with it, I write it down. It's odd: when you get the plot line down in note form, the gremlins start to come sneaking out of the woodwork. You'll see problems you never perceived before. They might be problems of timing, or geography, or great bald patches in the plot will show through: swathes of story in which nothing much happens. These parts have a ghastly potential for being boring — that being the single sin of which a writer must never be guilty. Never, ever bore your readers. Do that, and they'll put the book down ... and they won't buy your next one, either. So, get the story firmly in your head. Write it down, and LOOK at it. Imagine, or figure out, how many pages will be needed to get over, or round, this subplot or that plot device. Look for the bald spots. Rework the plot a couple of times; reverse the order of some scenes. Roll two or three characters into one ... or split one character up into two or three. And write biographical files, so you don't trip yourself up on the details, six months and 350pp from now. Lastly, sketch a timeline, and plot the events of the story against it. The scale of the timeline can be anything from minutes to years, depending on what you need. Make sure you leave enough time for Jack to get over the smashed bones in his foot, for Jill to hike out of the wilderness after crashing the glider, for Bob to work out how to fix the motor and get the fishing boat back to port, and for Brenda to take the train from London to Cairo!" Always keep in mind that writing and editing are two sides of the same coin. Two jobs which can't be done alone. They're the flyer and the catcher in the circus act ... and the better the catcher, the higher the flyer can, well, fly.

Give yourself time to learn the skills of writing and editing. Don't demand of yourself that you lean it all in a week. Remember that an apprenticeship as a tradesman takes years to finish, and appreciate that it's just as tricky mastering every aspect of writing as it is to learn every nuance of fixing leaky faucets!

Let's assume, for the moment, you're determined to succeed. You're going to crack the market and get published, build a writing career — or bust. Let's also assume there's a lot you need to know, and you're smart enough to admit it. You're on this page to track down the information, and you hit paydirt. When it comes to writing and editing, you'll find it here.

As we said above, the writing side of the circus balancing act is a multi-faceted artform. Approached 'all of a piece, it can be overwhelming, so we've broken the whole thing up into nibblets of information. Zero in on what you need right now, at this moment. The same holds for the editing aspect of the job. Focus on what you need right now, right here, to get a particular job done. Master one thing at a time, then go on to the next chore. When you work bite by bite, things don't look nearly as overwhelming.

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