Characters dancing comes up pretty often in fiction. There are nights out clubbing with friends, weddings, heck, sometimes characters just start doing the Macarena in their kitchen. And that inevitably leads to the question of how that should be written. Capitalized? In quotes? Italics? All lowercase? That last option definitely doesn’t seem right. This question […]
Read More »Month: April 2013
Grammar: Collective Nouns—Singular or Plural?
Grammar Question Are group nouns treated as singular or plural? That depends on a couple of things. First is whether you’re using American or British grammar rules. And then the next question is whether or not the group is acting as a unit. I’ll never forget when I was a kid and first realized that […]
Read More »Publishing: Amazon Feature Alert—Follow This Author
Amazon has a really cool feature that allows readers to follow their favorite authors. Doing so will get recommendations dropped into their inbox when those authors release new titles, make new update, including blog posts, and otherwise tweak their author page. But in order to maximize this feature, you need to have set up your […]
Read More »Grammar: Commas with Dependent Phrases and Clauses
Dependent phrases and clauses usually take a comma when they’re at the beginning of a sentence but not when they’re at the end, especially if they’re adverbial (describing when, how, or where). For example: If I go to the store, I need to take my wallet.BUTI need to take my wallet if I go to […]
Read More »Style Question for Writers: Italics or Quotes for Titles?
Today’s Grammar Bite: How to style titles of TV shows, movies, songs, magazines, etc. I’ll even cover named vessels—crazy! 🙂 The rule of thumb—little things in quotes, big things in italics. Huh? you may be thinking. Think of it this way—a lot of works consist of smaller pieces. Books are a collection of chapters, magazines […]
Read More »Grammar: “Try and” vs. “Try to” and Anyways vs. Anyway
There are a lot of things we say in everyday speech that aren’t exactly correct in formal writing. A couple of examples are “try and (do something)” and “anyways.” Neither one is wrong necessarily, but they’re both considered informal. And yet we hear them all the time because they are firmly rooted in casual dialect, […]
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