I see this error surprisingly often.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
“Capital” has many meanings, including meaning the city that is the seat of government for your state or country. “Capitol” refers only to capitol buildings. http://ow.ly/nsqV30kCROI
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.
Wasn’t there a woman in the team at the end of the last film? Why has she vanished without trace, never to be mentioned?
Oh, I get it. There can only be one named female character per action movie.
Otherwise they might have a conversation about something other than a man, and then where would we be?
This article takes the opposite approach to mine. It spends three of its four points on using punctuation more freely and creatively, then, almost as an afterthought, notes that you should know the incorrect usages so you can avoid them.
I’d say: learn the conventions solidly and first (they are just conventions, but literate people will expect you to follow them). Then, once you have mastered your scales and arpeggios, start your jazz improvisation.
http://csidemedia.com/wellpresentedms will get you started.
Originally shared by Joanna Penn
Punctuation is one of the most basic tools in the writer’s toolbox. But let’s face it, we all struggle with it sometimes!
We can use professional editors, proofreaders, and services like Grammarly to help us fix our mistakes, but it’s important to understand the fundamentals.
In today’s article, Dominic Selwood, author of Punctuation Without Tears, gives us some tips. #writingtips #punctuation
I see a surprising number of comma splices in some books I review.
The problem with a comma splice is that the two parts of your sentence are not connected firmly enough. You either need to separate them into two sentences; use a semicolon rather than a comma; or put a connecting word like “and” or “so” in between.
There are a couple of other ways, too, which Mignon Fogarty sets out in this article.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
5 tools to fix a comma splice http://ow.ly/DURq30kCEbQ
Sample sentence: “Let’s ask my mom. Hey, Mom!”
When it’s standing in for a name, it gets a capital. The same is true of other titles like “captain” or “duchess”.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
Whether you capitalize “mom” depends on how you are using the word. Is it a nickname, a common noun, or a term of endearment? http://ow.ly/8A4U30kCD7z
Some people dislike the idea of “worldbuilding”. While the distinction made in this piece is more of a spectrum than a binary, it does have a point.
Reviewers seldom mention the worldbuilding in my Gryphon Clerks series, which was mostly worked out in advance, in detail. Several reviewers have mentioned enjoying the depiction of the world of the Hand of the Trickster books, which I made up as I went along. I think there’s something to be said for both approaches.
Originally shared by Adafruit Industries
Worldbuilding or Worldconjuring? The Science Fiction and Fantasy Debate
via Electric Literature
In contrast to “worldbuilding,” I’ll offer the term “worldconjuring.” Worldconjuring does not attempt to construct a scale model in the reader’s bedroom. Worldconjuring uses hints and literary magic to create the illusion of a world, with the reader working to fill in the gaps. Worldbuilding imposes, worldconjuring collaborates.
Let me make a necessarily incomplete analogy to another platform. In painting, worldbuilding is like Renaissance art that attempts to create realistic figures even when they are cherubs, demons, or god. Worldconjuring is a spectrum of other techniques: Matisse implying dancing figures with a few swoops of the brush, Picasso creating a chaos of objects to summon the horrors of Guernica, Magritte shattering our vision with impossible scenes. We should enjoy realistic paintings, but we shouldn’t impose their standards on every school of art.
Worldbuilding is The Silmarillion, worldconjuring is ancient myths and fairy tales. (In fairy tales, we don’t learn the construction techniques of the witch’s gingerbread house or the import/export routes of evil dwarves.) Worldbuilding is a thirty page explanation of the dining customs of beetle-shaped aliens, worldconjuring is Gregor Samsa turning into a beetle in the first sentence without any other fuss.
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Everyone needs an editor. Even you.
Tim Powers.
Originally shared by Alexander M Zoltai
I plan to use this excellent article from Juliette Wade to deepen the point of view in my current books.
These are mostly about getting the details of guns, injuries, and forensic evidence right, rather than anything to do with writing as such. But getting those things wrong will lose a proportion of your readers, who will no longer trust you. If you can’t get reality right, they won’t be prepared to suspend disbelief for your fiction.
Originally shared by Writers Write