Category: Writing Issues
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Avoiding and Correcting Awkward Sentences — Part I
What exactly is an awkward sentence? Definitions may vary, but it’s safe to say that an awkward sentence is one that lacks balance, clarity, and/or meaning due to poor word choice, poor structure, missing transitions, or some similar deficiency in the way it is composed. In some cases, the “awkwardness” is fairly easy to correct. In…
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That’s a Capital Idea (Part IV)
Reading history has always been one of my favorite hobbies since my parents gave me the American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as a Christmas gift some 60 years ago. Maybe because I have read more history books than the average person, I know that major historical events should be capitalized. That’s also…
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That’s a Capital Idea (Part III)
When it comes to capitalization, there are few words that cause more confusion than school subjects. Such words are usually lowercased, unless the subjects themselves are proper nouns. That’s the case with any language that is being studied: French, English, German, Spanish. It also applies to an area of study that focuses on a particular…
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That’s a Capital Idea (Part II)
Consider the following paragraph. I have a friend who has always wanted to visit the Pacific Northwest. So I invited him to my home in the southern part of Oregon. Once he arrived, we took my car and drove 30 miles west to Gold Beach. We tried to find a restaurant there that served high-quality…
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That’s a Capital Idea! (Part I)
To capitalize or not to capitalize — that is the question. Many people (especially students) seem to feel that by capitalizing a word, they give it more importance. However, there are a number of rules that determine when a word should be capitalized, and most have nothing to do with the word’s importance relative to…
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How Commas Could Get You Into a Fight
In my days as an instructor of basic English composition, I was often amazed at where students put commas. A comma might appear in the middle of a prepositional phrase or an infinitive. It could precede or follow a question mark or an exclamation point. At times, it seemed that students, while writing a composition,…
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Inlet Beta Readers Club: Writers Helping Writers
One of the hardest things for writers to do is edit their own work, especially later drafts that are close to being submittable. There comes a point when a minor grammatical error or plot hole has been overlooked so many times, it becomes “camouflaged” by the sound parts of a narrative. That’s why it’s so…
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Christmas vs. Xmas: The False Conflict
I once attended a church where the pastor was convinced “Xmas” represented a sinister attempt to eliminate Jesus Christ from the holiday we celebrate on December 25. “I hate it when they x-out the name of my savior,” he intoned in front of his congregation. However, after some research, I discovered the X in Xmas…
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Stand by Your Words!
We’ve all seen it – a car taking up two parking spaces. Usually, if other spots are available, it does little harm, but there can be exceptions. One such exception occurred several years ago, when I was going to a doctor’s appointment at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center. I was in one of those indoor…
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Literal vs. Figurative Words: Do They Really Mean That?
“Kill the umpire!” In the 150 or more years since the first baseball game was played, that demand has been shouted thousands of times by fans who believe their team suffered from a bad call by “the ump.” But do angry baseball fans really want to end the life of the man (or woman) standing…