Pronouns and Antecedents – How to Write What You Mean When Replacing a Noun By Kelly Schaub

Do you ever feel like spinning the arrow-spinner from the game Twister when reading? If the author has unclear antecedents to their pronouns, you might as well do so to find the noun referred to by the pronoun. “Stock prices again dropped today. They say we’re headed into another depression.” They whom, the stock prices? [...]

Em-dash Use and Placement – Punctuation For Fiction Writers By Kelly Schaub

In case you are unfamiliar with this favorite of fiction writers, the em-dash–often typed as two hyphens next to each other–is used to set off parenthetical information, as I did in this sentence, or to indicate a break in–
What? Mommy’s typing. No, you cannot have more ice cream.
The em-dash also indicates a shift or break [...]

Grammar Sentence Structure Checker – Easily Correct Your Writing! By Gil Lavitov

‘Grammar’ is one of the most problematic issues in writing and Grammar Sentence Structure Checker was developed in order to help us better deal with it. Although it can sometimes become frustrating, writing is a skill that we constantly need to improve if we want to achieve our writing goals. Want to learn how technology [...]

Grammar Capitalization – Correct Usage! By Jane Sumerset

One question most frequently asked is about grammar capitalization, when to capitalize people’s job titles, political names, or quasi-political entities. Writing manuals are mostly nowadays aligned themselves to the tendency of journalistic circles: less is better.
When a title appears to be as a part of the person’s name, mostly before the name, then it is [...]

English Grammar Checker – How Can it Help You in Writing? By Jane Sumerset

When writing, you really have to read your product again and again to check for errors in grammar and spelling. This process is called proofreading. This is often hard and most of the time, humans are the best proofreaders. Some say that this process can not be done electronically but there is a discovery of [...]

Not Your Grandma’s Grammar by Jane Straus

As if it isn’t enough that computers have influenced just about every area of our lives, you’d think that something as sacred as the English language would remain immune to technology’s pressures. Not so. You may not need to learn new rules of grammar as often as you need to update your computer’s RAM, but [...]

Some Sticky Grammar Situations or How to Avoid Some Ugly Mistakes!

by: Jan Kovarik
With the advent of electronic word-processing and spellchecker programs, many people just presume that simply by running spellchecker all of their grammar errors will be caught and corrected. This is simply not so. Spellchecker programs often include some grammar checking, but no man-made program can catch all the innuendoes of the English language.
This [...]

Grammar Basics: Verb

Some basics to help you brush up on your grammar. We’ll start with verbs.
A verb expresses action or a state of being.
Example:
Fred swung the bat.
Swung is the action. Bat receives the actions.
What’s the hardest part of grammar for you? Leave us a comment below.

IN DEFENSE OF THE MALIGNED “WAS”

by Lois Winston
Debunking a grammar myth
In my former life as a Contest Diva, I often received similar comments from judges. They’d circle every “was” in the entry and write in large capital letters — PASSIVE VOICE. Somewhere at some time in some RWA chapter or national workshop, someone told these judges, as well as many [...]

How to Write a Novel Podcast

We’ve mentioned Grammar Girl on CataU before. If you’re looking for grammar tips, I highly recommend her site. You can listen to podcasts and read transcripts about all sorts of little grammar issues.
This podcast is about writing a novel so I thought I’d point it out and pass it along.

Get the Grammar Girl Quiz widget [...]