When to hyphenate adjectives or word combinations that act as adjectives has long caused writers confusion. As usual with grammar rules, once you hear the answer and understand the principle, hyphenating compounds turns out to be pretty easy. A compound is a word marriage. It’s the name grammarians give to two or more words stuck together by a hyphen. Examples are “risk-taking daredevil,” “happy-go-lucky girl,” and “rain-streaked window” …
Read MoreTypes of Nonfiction Writing (Made Easy)
Are you trying to wrap your head around the differences between the types of nonfiction writing? Let me make that headache go away. First, there are two broad categories of nonfiction: research nonfiction and creative nonfiction. Research nonfiction is straight factual writing. Essentially, it means journalism (the kind stuff you find in the newspapers). Creative nonfiction, by contrast, is any ... Read More
When to Hyphenate Adverbs
When to hyphenate adverbs . . . it’s a question I’m sometimes asked as a book editor. The answer is, when you live in England. That sounds humorous, but actually I’m not joking. Grammar rules, you see, are different on the other side of the pond. In England they write “closely-watched cards” and “happily-playing children,” while in America, we write …
Read MoreThree Tips to Brighten Your Writing
As a professional editor and writing coach, I find different clients making many of the same writing errors. If I had to narrow it down, I’d say these three are the most common among aspiring authors:
sentences stuffed with “clutter words,” long prepositional-phrase trains, and grandiose verbiage. Here are some tips to help you identify and remove these from your writing …
The Rule of Three in a Series
Bet you didn’t know this little rule of thumb, that will make your sentences trimmer and more professional whenever you have a series of something. And the rule is (drum roll): only list three in a series! Not four, not five, not as many items as you would like to list in the sentence, but three. Three period. If you have four, ... Read More