Well! Having recently come off a long and arduous update of the MirrorVerse Archive, the Grammar Goddess that lives in my head has a few things that she needs to say before she explodes out of my ears and starts smiting people. It’s so embarrassing when she does that… Mind you, I'm not doing this to be nasty or condescending or anything like that, and I'm also not directing this at anyone in particular. In fact, I'm directing it at everyone who's ever written and posted to the Internet a fanfic, MirrorVerse or otherwise, Transformers or otherwise, including myself. I may be a Grammar Goddess, but even I need to be reminded of this stuff from time to time. So, I'm merely doing this to help everyone be a better writer, for the MirrorVerse, for fic-writing in general, and just for...well, for life in general. The ability to write well and correctly is an important and useful skill, no matter your current or planned profession.When all is said and done, good grammar is the very basis of good writing. You cannot possibly have the latter without the former. No matter how wonderful your story is otherwise, if your grammar sucks, then your story will without fail look infantile and it... Well, yes, it'll suck, too, because of that. Atrocious grammar will rip out the throat of all of the good stuff that you wrote. Why? Because grammar, although I readily acknowledge that it's a boring and tedious and, indeed, often annoying subject, is nevertheless the very foundation of all writing. Not just fiction writing, but nonfiction, scientific and technical writing, report-writing, everything. If that foundation is unstable, then of course the work that you layer upon it will also be unstable…and it will eventually collapse on top of you. That's not a good thing. Now, I warned you all in the MirrorVerse FAQ (Which I'm sure you've read if you write MirrorVerse, right?) that I reserve the right to send stories back to authors for the purposes of grammar editing if they do not meet my (admittedly) picky standards. Now, in truth, no one's doing anything heinous enough…yet…to make me want to do that. I reiterate: Yet. There are some repeating grammar/usage/style issues that I feel need to be addressed, however, because if they continue to be issues they will drive me insane. And then in a fit of pique, I will no doubt be nasty and start snidely sending things back to people. While working on the latest update, I did do a bit of editing here and there to some stories for the purpose of correcting some grammar/formatting snafus. But you all need to learn this stuff yourse So... "Now I'm gonna learn ya’s," as my Gram would say. :) Whether you like it or not. :) I suggest — especially if you're going to send stories for me to archive on my site because, as such, you are subject to my picky standards — that you have a look at this entire thing. Yep, I know it's long, and I know grammar is extremely boring, but really, it'll save you many headaches in the future. :) And if you recognize anything of yourself on the old Peeve List at the end of this huge thing (And you should because I think everyone is in there in some form…including me! *bows* Queen of Split Infinitives, right here! Yay, me!), then maybe you'll want to print this out or save it somewhere. Keep at least the Official Royal Pet Peeve List handy so that you can refer to it as you write, in order to make sure that you, as a person looking to have stuff archived on my site, are not doing anything that will really cheese me off. :) Because if these particular mistakes that I'm eventually going to address here are made in a consistent way that obviously isn't just a typo, then I will return stories to their authors for grammar editing. And I’ll do so with just a big ol' fat "Grammar edit, please!" note attached to it…and no directions as to how to fix anything. You will have to figure it all out for yourselves... For this reason and others, I suggest that you all trot out right this very minute to a local bookstore or library and buy/borrow a comprehensive grammar guide if you don't already own one. (Preferably, though, you should buy it, so that you'll have it forever.) Really! I'm not kidding. A grammar guide is something that I strongly encourage all writers, professional and amateur alike, to own, read, absorb, cherish, and keep right by their computer for easy reference while writing. Heaven knows I do! I can't remember all of the semicolon usage rules for the life of me! *shakes head* I'm always looking up stuff. There's no shame in that, no matter who you are. Oh, and while you're already at the bookstore, anyway, a collegiate-level dictionary and thesaurus would be really nice to have, as well. No writer worth his or her salt would be seen dead without any of those three books. No, it doesn't matter that your zippy word processing program has spell-check and grammar-check and an on-board thesaurus and all those other fancy-shmancy bells and whistles that word processing programs have these days. I guarantee you that the grammar check in particular won't catch everything, especially punctuation issues. I also guarantee you that the grammar check will mark some things as wrong when they aren't necessarily wrong, which will only serve to confuse the hell out of you. So all this stuff that I’m going to discuss needs to be in your brain. Not the computer’s. Yours. You need to know this stuff for yourself. Don't rely on a computer program to do it all for you…because it won't. Moreover, it can't. It's not nearly as smart as you are. So, go. Buy, read, and absorb the ol' grammar book. It's boring, I know, and you’ll hate me for making you do it, but it really is for your own good if you intend to be a writer, even if you only intend to write "mere" fanfic. All your readers will appreciate your efforts, and once you master all of your latent grammar issues (and everyone has one or two, at least), your work will instantly look and read much more professionally. And that is, as they say, A Good Thing™.But for now, read my ranting here, because I'm going to cover the very basics. This is not everything that you need to know, no, but it is the stuff you really need to know. In fact, this is all stuff that, if you're an American over the age of about 30 or so, you no doubt learned in probably Grades 3-6 but you might have since forgotten, given your advanced age and all. ;) If you're somewhat younger than that...Well, I'm afraid that you might very well be a victim of the "Must Teach Math And Science And Computers At The Expense Of Everything Else" Syndrome, so it's possible that you were never formally taught some (or all! :( ) of this. Also, let me say that if anyone has any questions about grammar whilst they're writing and you don't (yet!) own a grammar guidebook, please do feel free to email me with any and all such questions or with any problems that you encounter mid-flight, so to speak, that you can’t figure out by yourself how to resolve. You won't be the first to do so, trust me. Believe me, no question is stupid, and I will answer them all and help you to the very best of my ability. Nothing is worse than knowing or suspecting that something is wrong, but not knowing how to fix it…and then you subsequently bang your head against the wall for hours trying to fix it. If you keep your questions short and to the point, and if I happen to be online at the time, then I can answer right away, even. :) And asking questions will save you headaches in the long run, if you don't have to edit your stories. Or you can just post grammar questions to the Padded Cell, whether you're writing a fic or just a paper for school or whatever. Get enough questions going and maybe I'll even open up an "Ask the Grammar Goddess" Forum. I love to teach, after all. 'Tis my job. Or it was my job, at least, before my job became that of "Mommy." So now...I shall teach and you shall learn, whether you like it or not. :) Consider this a crash course in the very basics of elementary grammar. And then at the end of all this crap I'll go ahead and address the certain specific issues that have repeatedly cropped up in the MirrorVerse stories that I've worked on so far and that threaten to drive me more insane than I already am.... So, onward and upward…or maybe downward. You decide. :)Let's cover the basics first, so that we're all on the same page in terms of...Well, terms.
The Very Basic Parts of a Sentence Ahhhhhhh, I so long for the days when students were forced in elementary school to spend countless, tedious hours diagramming sentences. I hated to do it, sure. It is quite possibly the most boring and frustrating thing in the world, and I cursed the nuns who were my teachers at the time to the very depths of hell for making me do it... What am I talking about, you ask? Well, if the following picture looks sickeningly familiar to you, then you must already know the unique, exquisite pain that is diagramming sentences. (And you get bonus points if you can tell me how this diagrammed sentence would actually read. Answer's a bit further down the page...)
So now, when I talk to high school seniors about, say, subject complements and I get merely a blank, bewildered look in return, I'm not at all surprised. Vastly exasperated, yes. Surprised, no. Elementary English education as a whole, in fact, is done rather half-assedly nowadays here in the States, in the rush to emphasize the "almighty" math/science/computer stuff...and that just fries my circuits...but that's entirely another rant. :) Anyway, just in case you've forgotten or if you're an unfortunate victim of an educational system that churns out kids who understand Einstein's theories but who can't tell the direct object of a sentence from a hole in the wall, I am now going to explain what the heck that diagram above means...sort of. At least, I'm going to tell you what the components of the diagram are. Plus, I'm throwing in one other thing, too, because it relates to one of my pet peeves at the end of this thing.... Now, the diagram above is of the following sentence and, for ease of reference, I'm even going to color code the various parts of it for you.
Optimus Primal gave Dinobot and Rattrap a lecture. Now let's pick that sucker apart, shall we? It's a simple sentence, but it has almost all the basics you need to know in it. Subject: The subject of a sentence names who or what is performing the overall action of the sentence. Given that the subject is always a "who" or a "what," it follows that the subject of a sentence is always a noun, a phrase acting as a noun, or a subjective-case pronoun. (More on cases in the Peeve List.) In this sentence, the subject is the proper noun "Optimus Primal," because he is the one who is performing the action of the sentence, which is giving something. Predicate: The predicate of a sentence is everything that isn't the subject, but the most important part of it is the main verb(s) in a sentence. That main verb denotes the overall action of the sentence. In this case, the main verb is "gave," the past tense of "give." It should be noted that in order for a series of words to be considered a sentence, it must have at minimum a subject and a predicate consisting of, at the very least, one verb. Even something as simple as "I am" is considered a sentence because it has a subject (I) and a verb (am, the first-person present tense of "be") If a series of words, no matter how long it is, has no subject and/or no predicate, then it is simply a sentence fragment, and you must be very careful with those and use them only in certain specific instances, for stylistic reasons. The rest of the stuff I'm going to talk about in this section is not essential in a sentence and, indeed, some sentences do not have the following components. But many do, so you need to know what they are. In fact, I insist that you know because I am, of course, mean and dictatorial. Direct Object: The direct object, when there is one in a sentence, is the thing or person that receives the action of the sentence. As such, the direct object of a sentence is always a noun or an objective-case pronoun. In the example sentence, Optimus Primal is giving something, so giving is the action of the sentence. To figure out what the direct object of a sentence is, you have to figure out who or what is receiving the action of the sentence. In this case, you have to figure out what is being given. What is the ol' Bossmonkey giving in this sentence? Why, he's giving a lecture. (And he's really good at that.) So, therefore, the direct object of this sentence is "lecture." Sometimes, there is more than one direct object in a sentence. For instance, if the above sentence read, "Optimus Primal gave Dinobot and Rattrap a lecture and a swift kick in the butt, too," then "kick" would also be a direct object, and this sentence would therefore be said to have a "compound direct object." The same concept applies to indirect objects... Indirect Object: The indirect object, when there is one in a sentence, is the subsequent recipient of the direct object or the person or thing to which the direct object is transferred. As such, indirect objects are, too, always nouns or objective-case pronouns. In the example sentence, the subject (Optimus Primal) is giving the direct object (a lecture) to Dinobot and Rattrap. This means that "Dinobot" is an indirect object of the sentence and so is "Rattrap." Hence, the example sentence has a compound indirect object. Clauses: A clause is a sequence of words that is part of a larger sentence but that, itself, contains a subject and a verb. If you stick two or more clauses together, you have what's known as a compound sentence. The following is a sentence that contains two clauses: We built a snowman yesterday, but it melted today. "We built a snowman" is a clause because it contains a subject, "we," and a verb, "built." (It also contains a direct object, "snowman," and an adverb, "yesterday," but that's beside the point.) "It melted today" is also a clause because it also contains a subject, "it," and a verb, "melted." Now, there are four types of clauses, but I'm only going to address one of them at this moment, since that one is related to something that's on my Peeve List. The one type of clause that I wish to address at this moment is an independent clause, which is a clause that, if removed from a sentence, could be a recognizable, coherent sentence by itself. In the above example, both clauses are independent, as both "We built a snowman yesterday" and "It melted today" ar perfectly legitimate sentences by themselves. Most people can understand this concept, indeed. What eludes many people is how to join clauses together properly, and that, as I said, is an issue for the Peeve List...
The Seven Parts of Speech It's true! "Mad Libs" will teach you the seven little types of words make up the majority of our whole huge, confusing English language. And, indeed, the same seven types of words also make up the majority of every Western language on the planet. It's pretty cosmic, when you think about it... ;) So, once again, in case you've forgotten or in case you never knew, here are the seven parts of speech, with a brief(ish) explanation of what each of them does: Nouns: Nouns are words for persons, places, ideas, or objects. If you can point to something and name it by saying "That is a/an/the ____," then whatever it is that you are pointing at, whether it's a physical being/object or an abstract concept, is a noun. The subject(s) and object(s) of a sentence are always nouns (or pronouns or phrases that act as nouns). Pronouns: Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns in a sentence, so that you don't have to use the same boring nouns over and over ad nauseum in your prose. Like nouns, pronouns are often used as subjects and objects of sentences. Unlike nouns, however, they're quite tricky and will sometimes change form when they serve different functions in a sentence. This, in fact, is what trips up the Dinobots all the time. In fact, it once tripped up Optimus Prime, even. Don't be like a Dinobot, and, for heaven's sake, don't be like Optimus Prime! ;) Learn to use the right pronoun in the right place. It's really not that difficult at all, especially if you've obeyed instructions and learned the parts of a sentence that I enumerated above so that you know how to tell what's what in a sentence. :) That's why I did that first, don'tchaknow. ;) There are actually eight different types of pronouns, which can each serve different purposes in a sentence. For my purposes here and for reasons of (relative) brevity, I'm choosing only to address one of those eight types. They're the pronouns that are most often misused because they're the ones that change most often when used in different cases in a sentence. If you're truly interested in the intricacies of the other seven types of pronouns…Well, go get out the grammar book that you diligently went out and purchased when I told you to do so... The type of pronoun that I'm going to address is the personal pronouns, which are those pronouns that refer to specific people or things. There are sixteen of them, all together. Eight of them are subjective-case personal pronouns, meaning they are used solely as subjects of a sentence or in the predicate when the pronoun in question is not an object of the sentence. The other eight are their corresponding objective-case personal pronouns, meaning they are used solely as objects of a sentence. And this, of course, is where problems arise. Writers will often incorrectly use subjective pronouns as the object(s) of a sentence and objective pronouns as the subject of a sentence. I'll be addressing this issue further in the "Problems" section at the end of this thing. For now, I'll just let you know which pronouns are which.
Remember this right now for future reference: The subjective-case pronouns go in the subject of a sentence. The objective-case ones only go in the object(s) of a sentence. So, obviously, that means that you need to be able to identify the subject(s) and object(s) of a sentence in order to make sure that you're using these pronouns properly. If this is a talent that is current beyond your powers, I suggest that you learn how to do it. Right now. See the previous section of this rant for more information about how to discern which part of a sentence is which. If this is an issue for you, however, here is an online quiz that you can take to help you recognize the subject of a sentence (And once you know what the subject is, the objects, if any, are relatively easy to pick out): Recognizing simple and compound subjects
Verbs: Verbs are words that describe actions. There are various types of them -- Transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, linking verbs, auxiliary verbs, etc. -- but that stuff's really not important to know for my purposes here. For my purposes, I just need to tell you how to conjugate verbs correctly so that I don't start have to screaming at people about verb tenses and subject/verb agreement in their stories. ;)
The verb "type" is an example of one of the easy verbs, called regular verbs. But you know that the English language cannot just let go and be that simple, of course. So, many verbs are irregular verbs, meaning that they don't follow the same easy-to-remember conjugation pattern as regular verbs. They totally change the way they sound and are spelled when conjugated. And the irregular verbs, unfortunately, include some of the most common verbs in the English language. Like, for instance, the verb "be," which is conjugated thusly:
Those freaky, sanity-draining irregular verbs! And there are so many of them! And, unfortunately, there's absolutely no rhyme or reason as to how they're conjugated, either; you just have to memorize them all, I'm afraid. Sorry, folks! This, dear friends, is one reason why grammar guides are A Good Thing™. Any guide worth its salt will include a large section of conjugation tables for notoriously tricky irregular verbs, like "lay" or "swim," that include not just the three simple tenses that I've done here but all the various tenses. Because, of course, just to make life even more bewildering, there are actually a total of — Count 'em! — twelve verb tenses in the English language... (But take heart! In some languages there are many more than that!) But I won't torture you with all of them here. Maybe in a future, more advanced, rant…) Adjectives: An adjective's sole purpose in life is to describe nouns, adverbs, or other adjectives. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. For example, take the following sentence: "That is a red rose." The word "red" is describing something. Specifically, it's describing the color of the rose. The word "rose" is a noun. (It passes the "I Can Point At It And Name It" test.) Since "rose" is a noun and "red" is describing it, then "red" should be an adjective. And, indeed, it is. Yay, I got it right! Not too difficult of a concept, is it? Yes? Well, given that simplicity, you'd be truly amazed how many people completely screw up adjectives and adverbs. Adverbs: The function of an adverb is, like an adjective, to describe, too, except that they only describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They usually — Though not always! The word "always," for example, is an adverb — end in the suffix "-ly," which tends to give them away. For example, take the sentence, "I awoke early this morning." The word "early" is describing when I awoke. "Awoke" is a conjugated form of the irregular verb "awaken." Therefore, "early" is an adverb, and you could figure that out even if it didn't have that tell-tale "-ly" on the end. Again, it's a very simple concept and, again, you'd be amazed how many people screw it up…and the sad thing is that they often don't even realize that they're screwing it up. More on this in the "Problems" section. Prepositions: Prepositions are little words whose function in a sentence is to tell where an object is located or where it's going or at what point in time an event happened. There are many, many prepositions in the English language — "to," "of," "in," "out," "on," "under," "before," "after, "during," "over," "up," "down," "inside," "outside," "alongside," "toward," "above," "below," etc. etc. etc. Prepositions most often occur in prepositional phrases that include nouns/pronouns that are often but not always the object(s) of the sentence. For example: "I gave the book to Joe. "…To Joe" is a prepositional phrase including the proper noun "Joe," which in this case is the indirect object of the sentence. Prepositional phrases also often act as adverbs or adjectives. For example: "I was sitting on a chair." The prepositional phrase "on a chair" describes where I was sitting. "Sitting" is a verb; therefore, the prepositional phrase as a whole is acting in this sentence as an adverb. Conjunctions: Conjunctions are words that link together or "conjoin," different parts of a sentence. There are several different types of them — coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, etc. — but it's really not necessary at this point to know what the differences are. For now, just know that words like "and," "but," "then," "because," "or," "if," etc. are all conjunctions. Often, you'll find them in lists of things. As in, "Megatron is big, mean, and ugly." Most often, though, you'll find them linking clauses together. That is, after all, their primary function in life. The most common mistake people make regarding conjunctions doesn't often concern the words themselves but rather the punctuation that is usually used in their immediate vicinity. And yes, we'll get to that, too.
The Two Basic Parts of a Piece of Fiction Dialogue/Introspection: Dialogue is the actual words spoken by the characters in a story. It's always denoted by opening and closing quotation marks. Introspection, on the other hand, is much like dialogue except that the characters don't say it aloud. Introspection is writing what the characters are thinking, not what they are saying, and it's denoted by the use of italics or, in a text-only environment, by single quotation marks. The nice thing about dialogue and introspection is that they're the places where you can break all the grammar rules...sort of. At least, it's the place where you might have an opportunity to do so, because both dialogue and introspection must be a fair and accurate representation of how the characters in question really speak, whether they're speaking aloud or only to themselves, in their own heads. A large and extremely important part of fanfic writing, in particular, is paying close attention to (and, of course, correctly reproducing on paper) an established character's speech pattern. Do it right, and your reader will literally hear the character's voice in their head as he or she reads. Do it wrong, and your reader will know it instantly and the character just won't seem "right" to the your reader. Doing it right, though, makes the characters in the story and the entire story seem more "real" to the reader. It's a little touch, but a very important one.And doing this means that you can have fun breaking the grammar rules because some characters routinely break the rules. Jazz, for instance, once said, "Let's hope it don't finish up with 'Third, bury Jazz.'" Ouch! That "don't" should be "doesn't," of course. But that's the way that Jazz generally speaks. He's never met a subject/verb agreement rule that he likes. So, that's how you have to write him, even if it hurts you to do so. Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, there's someone like Silverbolt from Beast Wars. If you listen to him, you quickly realize that he speaks very formally, with few contractions...and he speaks very correctly, as well. (Which warms this Goddess's heart, but that's beside the point.) At one point in the series he says, "I am not certain to what you are referring..." Holy cow! He didn't say, "I'm not certain what you're referring to..." He didn't dangle the preposition on the end of the sentence! Anyway, the point is that if a character talks a certain way, you get to/have to write him or her that way in their dialogue, whether they adhere to the rules of grammar or not. In fact, it's quite imperative that you write the characters as they are. It wouldn't do to have Jazz talking like an Oxford English professor or Silverbolt talking like someone who'd never met a grammar rule that he liked. They must speak in a story just as they do in the canon material, no two ways about it. So, dialogue is possibly your chance to cut loose, deliberately shatter some grammar rules, and flip them the bird while you're at it. ;) There are, however, some "structural" rules that you must follow that apply to punctuating and formatting dialogue and introspection. Those issues are on the old Peeve List. Narrative: Narrative is everything in your story that isn't dialogue or introspection. It's the stuff that would be read by a narrator if someone turned your fic into a play. Unlike dialogue/introspection, narrative is the place where you have to behave yourself, grammatically speaking. It's the part of your story that should be more or less rigorously correct from a grammatical standpoint. Oh, there are some things that you can do in fiction writing that you couldn't do in a more academic or technical paper, true. For example, in fiction and other informal writing, it's generally acceptable to begin a sentence with the word "and" or "but" when you do so for stylistic reasons. Sentence fragments — when used as emphasis relating to the sentence directly before them — are also more acceptable in fiction writing than in other forms of writing. But, in general, the narrative of a story is much more formal and grammatically correct than the dialogue/introspection. But besides the grammatical issues, narrative is much more rigorous than dialogue/introspection in one other main way. That would be maintaining the proper tense and voice in the narrative of your story. Yup, more on that on the Peeve List.
Some Specific Problems to Avoid Grammatical issues
The most common mistake that people make with pronouns is that they get what's called the "case" wrong. Certain pronouns are used in certain instances in a sentence when they're performing a function in a sentence for which a certain case is necessary. Now, there are several different cases in the English language. The two that I'm going to address here, because they cause the most problems, are the subjective (Sometimes called "nominative") case and the objective (Sometimes called "accusative") case. The key to using pronouns properly is to remember that subjective pronouns, logically, are used only in subjects of a sentence (or in the predicate of a sentence, so long as they are not an object of a sentence). Their corresponding objective pronouns are used only in the objects, direct or indirect, of a sentence. This is why it is critical that you have the ability to pick out the subject and object(s) of any sentence because this is how you can check whether or not you're using the right pronouns in the right places. If a pronoun's acting as an object, for example, then it had better be in the objective case! Let's give a few examples, using the personal pronouns from before. Remember: Some examples:
See? Simple! :) Well, so long as you can tell a subject from an object, of course... ;) As I said, you'd better learn it now, if you can't do it already... But, for further pronoun practice, here are some quizzes: Pronoun Usage I
As I noted in the "parts of speech" section, adjectives describe nouns, adverbs, and other adjectives only. Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs only. It's a very simple concept, yet it's one that generates countless mistakes in everyday speech, mistakes which tend to bleed over into writing, of course. Take, for example, the following sentence: I felt bad because she was upset with me. Notice the word "bad" in there. What is its function in the sentence? It's describing something. Specifically, it's describing how the subject of the sentence, "I," is feeling. "Felt," of course, is a conjugated form of the irregular verb "feel" and "bad" is an… Ooops! "Bad" is an adjective! Adjectives never, ever describe verbs. Why is "bad" attempting to describe a verb here? Answer: I haven't a clue. "Bad" should instead be the adverb "badly." You very rarely, of course, hear/see this done correctly, do you? I can't for the life of me figure out why… And, just as an aside, I would like to note that I'm currently writing this on a word processor…and its grammar check did not catch that mistake I deliberately made in that example sentence. This is why I insist that you don't rely on a grammar checking program…
Y'know what? Neither of these words actually exists in the English language! "Always" is a word." "Already" is a word. "Almighty" is a word. "Altogether" is a word. "Also" is a word. "Although" is a word. "ALRIGHT" IS NOT A WORD! Expunge it from your vocabulary this very instant, or I will have to hurt someone. It is always, always written "all right." Two words, not one. As for "alot…" Well, it should be "a lot." Like "all right," it's always two words, not one. But besides that issue, in most cases I'd heartily discourage its usage if at all possible, anyway. There's nothing wrong with it, technically...but it sounds quite juvenile in both written English and spoken English. There are better and far more concise and/or descriptive words/phrases that you could use in place of it, and they won't make you sound like you're five years old, either... For instance, instead of saying/writing "A lot of people," you could say/write, "Many people." Or, instead of saying/writing, "He liked it a lot," you could say/write, "He liked it very much."
Ohhhh, man....These are issues that really, really make me twitch, so please, please, please take this peeve of mine to heart and learn to avoid it, or you'll make me foam at the mouth, and that's not pretty at all... Now, the above four sets of words all, of course, sound the same. However, they all have different meanings and are, in some cases, completely different parts of speech. Please learn the difference between these words and then use the right one in the right place, like so: The word "they're" is a contraction of the words "they are," meaning that it's those two words mashed together so that you don't have a separate noun and verb. Instead, you have one word that's both. The word "there" is an adverb indicating someone or something's position, as in "Jane is sitting there." The word "their" is a possessive pronoun meaning "belonging to them." These are not interchangeable words, folks! The right word must be used in the right place. If it isn't, I start to twitch. Do it consistently enough, such that I can tell it isn't a simple typo on your part, and I violently convulse. And then I subsequently become very...unhappy. The other three pairs of often-confused words are, like "they're/their" also confusions of contractions and possessives. The word "your," the word "its," and the word "whose" are all possessive pronouns meaning "belonging to you," "belonging to it," and "belonging to whom/which" respectively. The word "you're," the word "it's," and the word "who's" are contractions of the phrases "you are, " "it is," and "who is," respectively. Don't confuse them! Luckily for you, there's an easy way to test whether or not you've used the right word when it comes to deciding when to use a possessive and when to use a contraction. Say that you've written the sentence, "The dog chewed on it's bone." Say that you're not sure whether you used that "it's" correctly. The easiest way to test it is to replace the contraction "it's" with the phrase that it stands for, "it is." If the sentence still makes sense after you do that, then you're fine. If not, you need to use the possessive form. In this case, if you replace "it's" with "it is," you get "The dog chewed on it is bone." Which, of course, makes no sense. So the "it's" in the sentence should be "its." The possessive is correct because the bone belongs to the dog.
Option A: "I won the lottery, so I bought a house." Option A joins the two clauses together using a comma and a coordinating conjunction, in this case "so." A coordinating conjunction is one of the types of conjunctions, the function of which is to combine two clauses into a sentence such that both resulting clauses are of equal importance and emphasis in the finished sentence. There are seven coordinating conjunctions and, ironically enough, the word "FANBOYS" can help you to remember them. They are as follows: For Now, the cogent issue with joining clauses using Option A is the punctuation involved, whether or not that comma before the conjunction is necessary. The key to figuring that out is determining whether or not you indeed have two independent clauses. Only if you have two independent clauses, as you do in the example, do you need that comma before the conjunction. Say instead that your sentence is, "I bought a Coke, and drank it." You may wonder now whether or not you need that comma before the "and." What you need to do in order to find out is analyze the sentence, take it apart. "I bought a Coke" is, indeed, an independent clause. It has a subject, "I," and a verb, "bought," and when taken out of the sentence it makes a sentence by itself. The other half of the sentence is "and drank it." Not only can that not stand by itself as a sentence, but it's not even a legitimate clause, as it has no subject, nothing that is doing the drinking. (Clauses, remember, must include both a subject and a verb in order to be considered a clause.) Therefore, in this case, you're not linking together two independent clauses, so that comma in there is not necessary. The sentence should just be "I bought a Coke and drank it." Option B: "Since I won the lottery, I bought a house." And then there's Option B, which is to subordinate one of the clauses. You now know what an independent clause is. One of the three other types of clauses is a dependent or subordinate clause. Like all clauses, they contain a subject and a verb, but unlike independent clauses, they cannot stand by themselves as a coherent sentence. This is usually because they contain a subordinating conjunction, which is a conjunction that, unlike a coordinating conjunction, establishes a relationship between the two parts of the sentence that it combines. The final result of using subordinating conjunctions is tha one of the clauses then depends upon the other for its contextual meaning. Hence, the terms "dependent clause." The most common subordinating conjunctions are "because," "since," "if," "though," "although," "that," and "then." If you see those words in a sentence, it's a pretty safe bet that its accompanying words form a dependent clause. In the example sentence, the subordinating conjunction "since" makes the clause "Since I won the lottery" a meaningless sequence of words if left by itself. It leaves the reader asking, "Since you won the lottery....what?" Hence, by adding the conjunction "since" to what was an independent clause, we say that you have "subordinated" it. You've made it rely on the independent clause ("I bought a house") for its meaning. (And note: When a sentence begins with a clause, the clause is always set off from the rest of the sentence with a comma because the dependent clause has become introductory, hence the comma after the word "lottery" in the example sentence.)But say we were to invert the sentence and write, "I bought a house since I won the lottery." You may now be wondering whether or not you need a comma before that "since," as we did with Option A. But remember, a comma is required only when joining two independent clauses in this manner. "I won the lottery" is still subordinated with that "since," so it is still a dependent clause, not an independent clause. Therefore, no comma is needed before the conjunction.It's a confusing issue, I know. It's one that many people don't bother to learn. They'll just stick commas into their prose willy-nilly, whether they belong there or not, and they're content with their complete ignorance of the issue. But I'm afraid that you as a MirrorVerse author do not have that option, because, of course, the mean and dictatorial Grammar Goddess is watching you, and correctness in this matter is something upon which she will insist. For further practice/help with this issue, the following is some links to a few nifty interactive quizzes from the same site as the others to which I've linked: Identifying independent clauses
Style/Usage Issues and Other Random Annoying Things
Y'know...I already ranted about this very issue in...well, in another rant that I wrote about fanfic writing. So, I'm going to be hideously lazy and just copy and paste here. It bears repeating, after all, and some of you may not have read the other rant, anyway. So, here's what I wrote before, just slighly modified here and there. It all goes double for this rant: There are two types of narrative voice with which you should be concerned. One is third-person narrative, the other first-person narrative. Third-person narrative is told through the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator who knows the entire plot of the story and who can see into all the characters' heads, so to speak. Because of this, you as the narrator can relay to your reader all of the different characters' thoughts at any point in the story. As such, it's perhaps the easiest and most common narrative voice used by writers of both fanfic and mainstream fiction. A brief example: The night was like a smothering blanket, absorbing all light, all sound, all warmth. Joe walked down the street, bathed in the anemic light of the streetlights spaced at regular intervals, like little soldiers standing rigidly on the battlements of a fortress, ever vigilant, ever watchful. He sighed and wondered again how his life had become so hopelessly complicated. Notice that nowhere in this bit of narrative does the word "I" or "you" appear. Indeed, they should not appear in third-person narrative writing. (Dialogue is different, of course.) Third-person narrative is detached, impersonal, non-judgemental, and omniscient; it does not have the immediacy and the personal focus that using the word "I" imparts on your writing. Likewise, when using this voice, the writer should never address the reader directly by using in the narrative any form of the word "you." (Again, dialogue is a different story.) Also notice that all of the verbs in the above passage are in some form of past tense. Present tense in any form should never be used in fiction writing except in some odd cases of stream-of-conciousness writing (As in, for example, my fanfic entitled "Outcast"), where a character is telling the reader what's going on in his or her head at that very moment as the events happen. This device should probably not be used for an entire fic, however, at least not for a long fic. Past tense should be used for the majority of a fic's narrative, if not all of it. To illustrate these common mistakes in third-person narrative writing, here is same passage, still in third person, but done incorrectly in places: The night is something you can almost feel, a smothering blanket absorbing all light, all sound, all warmth. Joe walks down the street, bathed in the anemic light of the streetlights spaced at regular intervals. They might seem to you like little soldiers standing rigidly on the battlements of a fortress, ever vigilant, ever watchful. Joe sighs as he wonders again how his life has become so hopelessly complicated. This may sound good. It does use good imagery. It is, however, a technical minefield. The "you" in the first and third sentence is addressing the reader, something which should never be done. As a writer, you are telling a story; you should not be telling the reader what to think or feel about a setting or a character. That's for the reader to do. Further, the verbs "is," "walks," "seem," "sighs," and "wonders" are all in present tense. Again, the narrative of a story should never be written in present tense. Present tense does not fit the "feel" of narrative, particularly third-person narrative. Unless you are writing in stream-of-consciousness, you are telling a story pertaining to things that happened in the past, even if it was just moments ago. Therefore, past tense is the only verb tense to use in narrative writing. Now, if you like the inappropriate immediate and more "personal" feeling of the above passage, however, you might enjoy writing in first-person instead... First-person narrative is more "personal" in that it uses the word "I" and is told from the viewpoint of one single, non-omniscient character at a time. It still, however, never uses present tense and never addresses the reader. Here is the same dreary passage once again, modified a bit and converted into first-person form: The night was a smothering blanket, absorbing all light, all sound, all warmth. I walked along, bathed in the anemic light of the streetlights that were spaced at regular intervals along Elm Street. They seemed to me like unfeeling, impassive soldiers, those lights, standing rigidly on the battlements of a fortress, crowding around me, staring down at me, summarily judging me. I stared indifferently back at one of them and sighed, wondering how my life had become so hopelessly complicated. Limiting the narrative of a story to the viewpoint of one character, as the above passage does, can be good because it can allow you to get deeply into the head of the character from whose viewpoint you are telling the story, allowing you to reveal their thoughts directly, without any interpretation from a narrator. But it can also be bad because you lose the freedom of omniscience that third-person narration gives you. You can tell your reader to the finest detail what's going in the viewpoint character's head...but you can't say anything about the internal goings-on in another character's head. So, in general, it's easier to use third-person. It can be difficult to sustain the first person viewpoint for longer than a twenty-page story or in a story with a "cast" of more than about five characters or in a story that has multiple plots because, obviously, your viewpoint character has to be involved in every facet of the story. That's difficult — though not impossible — to do with larger-scale stories. All in all, my advice to you is to decide before you write your story what voice/viewpoint you want to use in it. The most important thing is to keep the voice consistent. Never flip back and forth between third-person and first-person. Never address the reader directly. Never tell your reader what to think. That's their job. And whatever you do, be obsessively vigilant about your verb tenses. In general, never use present tense in any form. If you're confused about verb tenses...Again, I suggest you read up on basic grammar. Nothing, but nothing, makes a story look more amateur and just downright bad than a liberal dose of misspelled words scattered through it. Poor spelling is even worse than poor grammar. And don’t just rely on your word processor's inadequate spellchecker function! It will not catch everything, particularly if your misspelled word is acceptable as a different, correctly-spelled word. Like, for instance, if you’ve used "loose" instead of "lose." (They are entirely different words — entirely different parts of speech, even! — with entirely different meanings, you know…) or "except" instead of "accept." I see those two all the time, and they drive me bonkers. Crack open that dusty old dictionary, kiddies, and check any word the spelling of which you are not absolutely certain before you put a story in the public eye and certainly before you send it to me to archive because I'll bounce it right back to you. Why? Well, because I'm mean and dictatorial, of course. And because, with me, the whining "But I suck at spelling!" excuse just will not fly. Yes, on this I will be ruthless. I will send stories back and refuse to archive them until all spelling errors have been corrected. Why? Because the minute you decide to write a piece of fiction, even if it's "just" fanfic, you have become a writer. As such, it is your obligation to do your level best not to desecrate the art. Therefore, it's your obligation to make your work as professional as you possibly can, even if it's "just" a fanfic. More than that, as a writer you owe it to yourself to learn to spell without relying on a computer program, anyway, so that misspellings that your computer won't catch will not drive away potential readers. Believe me, such errors will drive me away, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's that snobbish. And really, anyone who is capable of writing a story is also quite capable of using a dictionary, whether they suck at spelling or not. So there’s really no excuse for misspellings in the final draft of a story. No excuse at all, other than plain old laziness. If nothing else, get someone else to look your story over for you before you send it to me. Because misspellings in a (supposedly) finished piece really, really make me twitch. In fact, I've been known to go beyond twitching and into full-blown convulsions over the issue. ;)
Whew! I think that's it... Was that enough for you? Because, really, I could go on... But I guess I'll save it all for another rant another day. But let me reiterate, though, that now that I've laid out these few grammar rules for you, I expect you MirrorVerse writing people, especially, to get this stuff right. And, like I said, I'll gladly answer any questions you might have about this stuff or anything else grammatical. And even if you're not a MirrorVerse writer, but just a general writer of fanfic who's stumbled upon this thing, I hope that you've learned a thing or two and that you'll do your part to make us twitchy Grammar Gods and Goddesses a little less...well, twitchy. ;) Thank you for your attention — if, indeed, you are still awake at this point — and good night... ;)
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