Sentence length: Too long or too short?

Could you read that? Did you understand it?

Way back in the eighteenth century, or thereabouts, sentences were long because ladies sat in their drawing rooms, while Mama read out the latest book, sentence by sentence, for the young women to dissect, also sentence by sentence, comma by semicolon, while they all discussed all the descriptions therein. It was only after a page or three they would stop to work out the actual story behind the sentences. These days an editor would put a big fat red line (or possibly a track changed red comment) on the opening sentence of this blog and say “49 words. Too long. Cut into 3 short sentences for clarity”.

Readers today want their description in bite-sized chunks. They don’t want to stop and decide whether the punctuation required an extra comma or semicolon here or there, or if the curtains on the withdrawing room windows would have been prettier with an extra ruffle of French lace. They want to know if the villain catches the hero right now.

As a fiction author, your job is to keep the reader reading right to the very last line of the book. Only then do you want them wondering about window decorations or anything other than the characters and what is happening to them.

Of course you do need to vary the sentence structure somewhat. Every sentence starting with “The hero…” gets boring fast and will not keep the reader entertained. As for the curtains, show them flapping in the breeze, the French lace billowing (or whatever). Your reader will fill the gaps to their own satisfaction.

And yes, sentences can be too short. Fragmentary. Boring. Although fragments can add a lot of tension to a pivotal scene. But don’t do it too often.
Keep writing!

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Passive Voice

Many readers lose the plot (quite literally) when the author starts to use passive voice. Passive voice is when things happen to something or someone, instead of people doing things.
“The grass was mown by Fred from next door.”
No!
In active voice it’s much better. “Fred from next door mowed the grass.”
See the difference. Second time around we want to know all about it. Did the person watching enjoy the scent of fresh-mown grass? Was Fred from next door young and handsome? Or was he a senior citizen that had our reporter wondering if she ought to take him a cool drink before he developed heat stroke?

Some writers (and school students) struggle to know whether what they’ve written is active or passive. A simple test is if you can insert “by zombies” after the verb you have passive voice.

In our first example above “was mown” is the verb.
“The grass was mown by zombies” is passive voice.
In our second example “mowed” is the verb.
“Fred from next door mowed by zombies”. Nope that doesn’t work. The sentence is in active voice.

So now you know. If you want to kill off the bad habit of writing in passive voice, be sure to check by adding “by zombies” after your verb.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Intensive purposes

People often use words and phrases in speech and writing that they have heard or misheard. A common one is: “Intensive purposes”. The correct phrase is “for all intents and purposes”. It means “practically speaking.”

Another annoying error is “I could care less”. If you could care less it means you do care. What people mean is “I could NOT care less”. In other words I don’t care at all.

“Decimate”: This means to take ten percent. It’s often used incorrectly to indicate something is almost totally destroyed. Taking ten percent is a lot but it’s nothing like wiping something out completely. If you decimate someone’s army you still have a very big battle ahead of you to get rid of the other 90%.

Travesty: Means mockery. Many people use it incorrectly to mean tragedy.

For twenty-five commonly misused words check out: http://www.trendzified.net/common-words/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The English language is crazy!

English is a difficult language to learn. Compared to some other languages where simple rules are always true, English is a mish-mash of rules and exceptions to those rules.
Like this one: I before e, except after c, unless you're running a feisty heist against a weird beige neighbor who owns a rottweiler.

Then there are apostrophes. Ignoring the exceptions for a moment there are basically two rules for when you DO use an apostrophe.
1. To indicate a letter is missing: they’re instead of they are
And
2. To indicate possession: Helen’s frog

PLURALs don’t require an apostrophe. One apple, two apples.

See? It’s not really that hard at all.

For a full explanation read this: http://www.grammarly.com/blog/2015/follow-these-guidelines-to-avoid-an-apostrofail/


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Pronouncing words

If you can’t pronounce it correctly, you probably won’t spell it correctly either.

Remember Sarah Palin’s “refudiate”? But there are a lot of words people commonly mispronounce, and if they’re spoken incorrectly, most likely they’ll be spelled wrongly as well.
How many people do you know who say “aks” instead of ask, eckspresso instead of espresso, and eckcetra instead of etcetera?

Here are some other commonly mispronounced words:
Affidavid instead of affidavit
Cannidate instead of candidate
Irregardless instead of regardless.
Libel when you mean liable.
Miniture instead of miniature
Perogative instead of prerogative
Revelant instead of relevant
Triathalon instead of triathlon (many people add an extra “a”)
Upmost instead of utmost
Pronunciation is often mispronounced as “pronounciation”.
Hyperbowl” rather than Hyperbole
And for Melbournians Essadon instead of Essendon for the suburb and football team.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

“Youse guys get off of the bed!”

“Youse guys get off of the bed!” aka Accents and Slang.

Between two villains or two teenagers this line is perfectly acceptable. Spoken by a CEO, millionaire, or university graduate not so much unless it’s a deliberate attempt to be funny. An author doesn’t need to have perfect grammar. However an author does need to have a basic feel for how her characters speak. And characters in well paid positions, or characters who went to a good school, would generally speak grammatically unless they were deliberately playing a part.

Therefore when the narrative has many grammatical errors, this raises flags in the reader’s mind. Either the book needs good editing or the author needs to listen to her editor and make some corrections. There is no excuse for constantly mistaking their/there, or other simple errors, anymore than there is for having characters speak poorly.

On a similar note, if you are using dialects, be very careful to have them checked by a person who speaks that dialect fluently. Nothing is worse than having a creole speaker break into latin in the middle of a sentence. Babelfish and other such programs are not infallible, so always check what you’ve written.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The importance of using correct grammar at work

The Wall Street Journal has been running a discussion on grammar in the workplace and it’s fascinating reading. They complain about things like misusing is and are, me and I, and saying things like “I could care less” when you mean you could not care less. You don’t care at all.

Well these people certainly care about grammar. One company will no longer hire anyone at all who fails their spelling and grammar test. Several other companies are running in-house grammar training sessions. Another company insists that every outgoing email is proofread by a resident grammar guru before it’s sent.

In a survey of 430 employers taken earlier this year, a stunning 45% said they planned to increase training programs to improve employees’ use of grammar and other skills.

For authors, this is just another reason to make sure their book is polished before it’s published. If the wheel is turning back to insistence on good grammar, it’s smart to stay ahead of the curve. And for everyone else, maybe it’s time to ensure any important business documents are proofread before they’re sent out into the world. You never know if your project will be read by a grammar Nazi or not, and for the sake of your next pay rise, it’s better to err on the side of grammatical correctness.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Grammar Errors Bosses Hate

I was fascinated to see an article in the news entitled, “Grammar mistakes that could cost you the job”. Some days I think it’s only editors and English teachers who care about grammar, but apparently not.
Top of their hate list was spelling the company name incorrectly. (Well duh!) But also considered unforgiveable was using “irregardless” (this is not a word. It’s “regardless”), could of or should of (it’s “have” not “of”), and mixing up a whole long list of homonyms - words that sound alike but have different meanings. (Spell check can’t help you here. Look them up in onelook.com or any other dictionary).
Next on their list was getting wrong things like I versus me, your/you’re, adverbs and adjectives, it’s/its, than/then, and finally things like split infinitives.
If you’re planning to apply for a new job, or a job promotion, better brush up on your grammar first. It really does matter.
This is the article in full:
http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/money-manager/career/article/-/18427804/grammar-mistakes-that-could-cost-you-the-job/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Now you know all the easy grammar rules, here are some hard ones for you

Try And. No, it’s try to. The trying is part of the action so therefore the verb needs to be an infinitive. (try to jump, to walk, etc)

Data is a plural word. So is dice. If you have just one little fact it’s a datum. One little cube with dots on it is a die.

Could care less. This means exactly what it says. You could care less about that person. You could care a whole lot less about them. If you don’t care about them at all, it’s could not care less.

Good and well are not interchangeable. Good is an adjective, but well is an adverb. An adjective modifies a noun but an adverb modifies a verb.
“John did good in the test” is wrong. He did well because did is a verb.
The pasta tastes good. This time good is correct because it describes the pasta and pasta is a noun.

Lay low versus lie low. To lay low is an action, to knock someone down. To lie low is to hide. Your villain might even lie low after being laid low by the hero.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The ten most common writing mistakes

These are the top ten mechanical writing mistakes
Proofing, improper word use, word choice, tense changes, special applications, copy and paste, long sentences, fragments, general statements, slang and abbreviations.
http://www.getpaidtowriteonline.com/common-writing-mistakes/

The top ten newbie author mistakes: lack of editing, dull writing, irrelevant detail, poor word choice, reliance on clichés, no sense of place, no shape or structure, poor dialogue skills, lack of technical knowledge.
http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/mistakes.shtml

This article concentrates on the business side of writing. And if you want to succeed as a writer, you do need to treat it as a business.
Procrastination, editing while you write, being too picky, overbooking, not giving your work time, not knowing what you’re worth, not saving money, not marketing your services, not following up, underestimating the client relationship.
http://www.newbiewriters.com/2012/11/10/the-10-most-common-writing-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/

And the top ten grammar errors.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~pasnau/writing/top10.html

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Why I threw that book against the wall (and broke my ereader!)

Plot holes you could drive a semi-trailer (18-wheeler) through.

They arrive at the party on foot thinking it’s a lovely evening for a walk. Then get into their SUV during the party to chase after the bad guys which includes climbing over fences and running like crazy. Hang on she was wearing high heels and a pretty dress. And she’s doing all this? And where did the car come from? Did they steal it?

Annoying characters.

He’s not Alpha, he’s pig-headed, arrogant, and is not protecting her, he’s using her as a doormat. Or, she’s so stunningly beautiful it makes the reader feel ill and she’s useless. Stands there wringing her hands and lets the villain catch her or the hero use her.

Bad grammar, head hopping that gives the reader whiplash, poor sentence construction, misplaced words, typos.

And so on. Solution—get an editor. Your best friend reading your book and telling you it’s wonderful is great. But you still need an editor.

Lack of world-building

This is most obvious in fantasy/futuristic worlds but is true for any book. If there are two green moons in chapter two, why is there a red moon in chapter ten? If the vampire in chapter six cannot go outside during the day why can the vampire in chapter ten attack the heroine in the middle of the day at the office? If the hero drove south for ten minutes to get to Grandma’s house on page forty why did it take an hour on page 120? As the author you can do anything you like, but you have explain to the reader how it is possible and why it is logical.

There’s lots of other details to get right, but fix these first and you’ll be well on the way to keeping your readers happy.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.