Comments on: Practical Advice for Writers: What’s that?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 29 May 2006 05:09:00 +0000

A voice in the C21 wilderness of lousy grammar, syntax, punctuation and spelling. Go Glenda!

Karen, a friend of mine has written a book about the use and misuse of the apostrophe – but do you think he can sell it? Of course not. Most people just don’t care. (Oh, and I’m so glad you have a BIP – Blog-in-Progress. I’m looking forward to seeing some action on it!)

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Sun, 28 May 2006 19:00:00 +0000

Good luck, Mckoala - and yes, I think you are right to choose the place where you think you have the best chance of being accepted.

I actually chose UK because I couldn't find any info on Australian agents back in pre-internet days. I mean - just where did one begin when not living there? I had no idea!

Will do, Karen! And I'm glad you now have a blogger ID.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 May 2006 18:24:00 +0000

What an excellent idea, Glenda! Grammar is a bugger. Get onto the whole apostrophe thing soon, will you? If I have to see one more it’s when it should be its … or people who insert them in words like wants … I ask you!!!!!! Want’s. I’m about to give up. I despair at the disintegration of the language, I really do.

Sigh.

By: McKoala

McKoala — Sun, 28 May 2006 17:41:00 +0000

Hi, pleased to meet you! I just found your blog via a comment on Miss Snark's site.

I'm interested to read about your long-distance agent/publisher challenges - I'm a Brit living in Australia at the moment. I've also lived in America, Canada and The Netherlands and chances are we'll be moving on again fairly soon. I write YA and have just started querying UK agents on the grounds that my writing is probably more British than anything else. Fingers crossed please...

McK

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Sun, 28 May 2006 14:15:00 +0000

Subjective completion? That's a new one to me!

Lucky for us, what they're called really doesn't matter as long as we know how to use em...*g*

It's odd, it's it, though, how you can only really get away with being ungrammatical if you understand what the grammar should be in the first place. And as a reader - Miss
Snark made this comment too a couple of weeks back - you can always tell the difference between a writer who knows what they are doing and one who doesn't and is ungrammatical by accident.

Kendall actually had a good idea by going to German site. I think I learned more about English grammar while learning French and German than I ever did on English class! Learning Malay was not fearly so hepful though. The language structure is just too different.

By: Bernita

Bernita — Sun, 28 May 2006 04:16:00 +0000

Those grammar terms do change from time to time. (I’ve run into three incarnations of something called a “subjective completion”, aka “predicate nominative.” – can’t remember the third)
Nevertheless, you are perfectly clear.

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Sun, 28 May 2006 02:05:00 +0000

Hey, great minds and all that – I had thought of dealing with which & that next week!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 May 2006 00:20:00 +0000

Thanks for starting this series of advice for writers. :-) I probably overuse "that," but my big confusion is "that" versus "which" (relative pronoun). I glanced at a grammar book at a store yesterday, but the explanation was short and unclear (to me...). ;-/ I like your examples of rephrasing to remove the relative pronoun

After reading your post just now, I found a page for learning English online (on a German site) with an explanation of that/which usage.

(My mom was an English teacher, BTW.)