I’m onto You
I sometimes have trouble with the preposition onto. Some of the time it’s pretty easy to know when I mean…
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Don’t Get Frowned Upon
If you haven’t heard it by now, adverbs are often frowned upon. It’s true—a lot of beginning writers use adverbs…
A Friend of Yours?
Are you a friend of John or a friend of John’s? Often writers will leave off the “possessive” apostrophe+s, but…
Do You Smell Bad or Badly?
Here’s something that writers often mix up. When you use verbs that express a state of being rather than an…
More Dangling Things
Here are some more dangling things. These are called dangling (and misplaced) modifiers. A writer might start a sentence with…
One Thing Leads to Another
One thing I see a lot in manuscripts is two sequential events happening simultaneously. Authors often construct sentences like this:…
Don’t Dangle
I see a lot of dangling participles. Okay, you are probably wondering just what the darn things are (so you…
Are You Coordinating?
I think one of the more subtle problems in punctuation is understanding a coordinate adjective and when to use a…
A Capital Thought
A lot of authors are unclear regarding when to capitalize a title or profession. The rule is pretty simple. When…
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