Tag Archives: grammar

1 GREAT REASON TO #PROOFREAD

We’ve all been there. Settled into a comfy chair, hot cup of tea on the table next to you, #e-reader or novel on your lap just waiting for you to open it. You sigh, kick back and open the book. For the first ten pages, it’s great then there’s a misuse of the word “their” when it should have been “there”. You shine it on. No one is perfect. A few pages later, #commas are lacking where commas should be. You are forced to read the sentence three times to make sense of it.
At this point, you may put the book down and never pick up another book written by that author. The best reason to #proofread and #edit is it will increase your earnings.

I have read books that are as bad or worse than the following “interview.” Just for fun see how many mistakes you find in this short piece then leave a comment below.

THE INTERVIEW

Interviewer: As an author, do you have any pet peeves?

Author: No, but I have several dogs.

Interviewer:  Oookay. You said you were thinking of traveling. Are you going to book signings?

Author(shakes head and smiles): No, no. Its my councilor. He told me I needed to fly the coupe for a while. I asked him if I should go to the dessert for a few days, Sunday and Monday. He said, “No, the dessert is too hot. You would be dyeing of heat strokes.” I told him I wanted to insure that I didn’t get too overly hot, so I won’t go to the dessert. It is certainly a factoid that desserts can be very hot.

Interviewer: So where will you go?

Author: I decided I would go further away, up into the mountains. My councilor asked me what I would do all by myself up there, and I told him I wanted to write a nonfiction book about dragons. I figure I can flout my intensive knowledge on the subject. In my book I will explain about all the folderol assimilated with dragons. One piece of folderol that I will talk about is how a young dragon’s voice is in the fortissimo range, so high it actually hurts you’re ears. But, a dragon’s song can be historical, and sometimes, I laugh so hard I can’t hardly catch my breath!

Interviewer: Would you mind if I ask our readers to give us some feedback on your interview?

Author: Oh, I love feedback. I am always looking to improve my writing.

Author leaves. Interviewer shakes head.

According to Nikolas Baron at Grammarly.com they proofread over four hundred freelancer profiles from eight categories for grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. They only selected freelancers with four stars and above. At the end of that study, they could correlate earnings to how well a piece of writing had been proofread and edited.
grammarly jpg
Simply said: When your work is proofread and edited you make more money.
To read this entire article go to  http://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check

Be sure to leave your email so you won’t miss future posts.

For special offers, inspirational image quotes, announcements, free short stories and much more, SIGN UP for e-newsletter, JUST FOR YOU. You will receive an e-copy of Dead Men and Cats, a novella, when you sign up for the e-newsletter.

If you want to receive notifications of blog posts and the newsletter you will need to sign up twice.

Drop by my facebook profile to see some great videos. http://www.facebook.com/ayawalksfar

Love photographs and images? Visit me at http://www.pinterest.com/ayawalksfar   See where members of the Special  Crimes Team have lived, check out some of the sites where the novels take place, and lots more!

 

 

Know the Write Rules before you Break them

Grammar, punctuation, word choice: these are the tools of writers.

To write effectively we need to know when and where certain punctuation is used.  A misplaced comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence.

Word choice is critical.  Using a word incorrectly can cause confusion, embarrassment and loss of credibility.

However, there are times in fiction writing  that breaking the rules makes the writing more powerful.  The only way to know how to effectively break the rules, is to first understand them.

Grammar Girl has an excellent, easy to use website for any writer to learn about these essentials.  In addition, you will also find information on proofreading, commas splices and so much more.  I highly recommend it.

Google search: grammargirl.quickanddirtytips.com

Sentence Fragments by Dave Dumais(scribbledhopes)

This was a conversation in a writer’s group.

scribbledhopes(Dave)

Re: Sentence Fragments

Our first Problem as writers

Actually people speak in sentence fragments all the time. That’s because we have body language and tone and voice pauses to drop hints on intent. So when we write, we tend to forget the last part and assume what we are saying is with the correct intent.
Continue reading