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February 20 - March 2, 2020
An “And” or a “But” (or a “For” or an “Or” or a “However” or a “Because,” to cite four other sentence starters one is often warned against) is not always the strongest beginning for a sentence, and making a relentless habit of using any of them palls quickly. You may find that you don’t need that “And” at all.
But many a sentence can be improved by putting its true protagonist at the beginning, so that’s something to be considered.*7
Feel free to end a sentence shaped like a question that isn’t really a question with a period rather than a question mark. It makes a statement, doesn’t it.
As a rule you should avoid comma splicing, though exceptions can be and frequently are made when the individual sentences are reasonably short and intimately connected:
If what follows a colon is a full sentence, begin that full sentence with a capital letter, which signals to your reader: What’s about to commence includes a subject, a verb, the works, and should be read as such.
DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO USE AN APOSTROPHE TO PLURALIZE A WORD.
the boss’s office the princess’s tiara is the no-brainer way to go.
If Jeanette has some pencils and Nelson has some pencils and Jeanette and Nelson are not sharing their pencils, those pencils are: Jeanette’s and Nelson’s pencils But if Jeanette and Nelson reject individual ownership and pursue a socialist policy of collectivization for the betterment of humankind, those pencils are now: Jeanette and Nelson’s pencils
Use roman (straight up and down, that is, like the font this phrase is printed in) type encased in quotation marks for the titles of songs, poems, short stories, and episodes of TV series.*33 Whereas the titles of music albums,*34 volumes of poetry, full-length works of fiction and nonfiction, and TV series themselves are styled in aslant italics.
It’s a fairly simple system, then: little things in roman and quotes, bigger things in italics.*35
And now, more often than not, you’ll simply see: What is to become of me? Estelle thought.*37 That last is best.*38
If one finds the need to quote something within quotation marks, one then opts for single quotation marks. As in:
For the sake of clarity, we use hyphens to helpfully link up a pair or passel of words preceding and modifying a noun,
Consider the difference between, say, “a man eating shark” and “a man-eating shark,” where the hyphen is crucial in clarifying who is eating whom,
Likely you don’t need much advice from me on how to use em dashes, because you all seem to use an awful lot of them. They’re useful for interruption of dialogue, either midsentence from within:
or to convey interruption from without:
An en dash is used to hold words together instead of your standard hyphen, which usually does the trick just fine, when one is connecting a multiword proper noun to another multiword proper noun or to pretty much anything else.
We won’t discuss the use of ?! or !? because you’d never do that.*50
GENERALLY, in nontechnical, nonscientific text, write out numbers from one through one hundred and all numbers beyond that are easily expressed in words—that is, two hundred but 250, eighteen hundred but 1,823.
Numerals are generally avoided in dialogue.
It’s considered bad form to begin a sentence with a numeral or numerals.
EVEN BETTER: Recast your sentence so it needn’t begin with a year. It shouldn’t take you but a moment.
that B.C. (“before Christ,” as I likely don’t have to remind you) is always set after the year and A.D. (the Latin “anno Domini,” meaning “in the year of the Lord,” as I perhaps don’t have to remind you but will anyway) before it.
Use of italics emphasizes foreignness. If you mean to suggest easy fluency, use of roman normalizes your text.
Basic “whom” use shouldn’t pose too many challenges. If you can remember to think of “who” as the cousin of “I,” “he,” “she,” and “they” (the thing doing the thing, a.k.a. a subject) and to think of “whom” as the cousin of “me,” “him,” “her,” and “them” (the thing being done to, a.k.a. an object), you’re most of the way there.
In “neither x nor y” constructions, if the x is singular and the y is plural, the verb to follow is plural. If the x is plural and the y is singular, the verb to follow is singular. That is, simply: Take your cue from the y.
If you’re writing of a situation that is not merely not the case but is unlikely, improbable, or just plain impossible, you can certainly reach for a “were.”
If you’re writing of a situation that is simply not the case but could be, you might opt for a was.
One capitalizes a job title when it’s used as an honorific, as in “President Barack Obama,” but otherwise it’s “the president of the United States,” “the pope,” and the various other et ceteras.
Period authenticity also mandates technical and societal plausibility, and this covers everything from the invention and obsolescence of phone answering machines
Dictionaries are particularly helpful in providing the first known use of any given word, so avail yourself of one.
I’d strongly suggest to the point of insistence that you avoid referring to two people by the same pronoun over the course of a single sentence; to be frank, I’d suggest that you avoid it over the course of a single paragraph.
On the other hand, if your paragraph is awash with names and pronouns and you think it’s all too much, hunker down and do the sort of revision that eliminates the need for an excess of either.
If your attempts to distinguish between unnamed characters of no particular importance lead to describing what “the first woman” then said or did to “the second woman,” you might want to step back and give these women, if not names, at least distinct physical characteristics that can be expressed in one or two words. The redhead. The older woman.
be wary of inadvertent rhymes,
By the way, characters who nod needn’t nod their heads, as there’s really not much else available to nod. And the same goes for the shrugging of unnecessarily-alluded-to shoulders. What else are you going to shrug? Your elbows?
How often do you stare into the middle distance? Me neither.
A brief, scarcely exhaustive list of other actions that wise writers might do well to put on permanent hiatus: the angry flaring of nostrils the thoughtful pursing of lips the quizzical cocking of the head the letting out of the breath you didn’t even know you were holding the extended mirror stare, especially as a warm-up for a memory whose recollection is apt to go on for ten pages Also overrated: blinking grimacing huffing pausing (especially for “a beat”) smiling weakly snorting swallowing doing anything wistfully
“After a moment,” “in a moment,” “she paused a moment,” “after a long moment”…There are...
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You’re also overfond of “suddenly.”
“He began to cry” = “He cried.” Dispose of all “began to”s.
Fond as I am of semicolons, they’re ungainly in dialogue. Avoid them. In real-life conversation, how often do you say the name of the person to whom you’re speaking? Not that much? Then why do your characters do it so frequently?
Use italics for shouting, if you must. And, yes, exclamation points—one at a time. No boldface, please, not ever.
Something, something, something, she thought to herself. Unless she’s capable of thinking to someone else—and for all I know your character is a telepath—please dispose of that “to herself” instanter.
If one of your characters is speaking and is cut off in midsentence by the speech or action of another character, haul out a dash:
When a line of dialogue is interrupted by an action, note that the dashes are placed not within the dialogue but on either side of the interrupting action. “I can’t possibly”—she set the jam pot down furiously—“eat such overtoasted toast.”
If one of your characters is speaking and drifts off dreamily in midsentence, indicate that not with a dash but with an ellipsis.
When characters self-interrupt and immediately resume speaking with a pronounced change in thought, I suggest the em dash–space–capital letter combo pack, thus: “Our lesson for today is— No, we can’t have class outside today, it’s raining.”*27
How do I know which words ending in o are pluralized with an s and which are pluralized with an es? A. You don’t. Look ’em up.
DAMMIT It’s not “damnit,” goddammit and damn it all to hell,
