How To:

How To: Basic Grammar

Hello there, Moni here. This time we'll deal with some basic grammar rules. I know I'm personally no one to talk about grammar, as I'm not even native, but there are basic things I manage pretty well and I'll try to explain them as simply as I can. I know all the technical stuff so if something is unclear, don't hesitate to ask.

Basic Mistakes: Spelling

These are the kind of mistakes that actually ruin your writing because they are so elementary that they only show you are reckless in your writing. These mistakes are always highlighted by an check-spell so you shouldn't miss them. You make these mistakes and you are saying something completely different. Let's start.

You're/Your. This is probably the most basic and horrifying mistake I've seen... and I see it so often it hurts. I know it's due to their phonetic similarity, but come on, people, you know they are so different. You're stands for "You are". It's a contraction of two words. Whereas your means it belongs to you. It's a possessive pronoun, not a personal pronoun with verb included. So when you say "Your welcome" you are actually saying that this is my welcome. I didn't know I have a welcome. Thanks? So if you make this mistake, you are ruining the flow of the story. The same goes for the other cases I'll point now.

It's/its the first is the contraction of it is. The second is the possessive pronoun of it. "The book and its lovely pages." "It's a lovely book."

He's/His The first stands for HE IS, again, it's a contraction whereas his is the possesive pronoun of he, indicating it belongs to him.

They're/Their/There The first is the contraction of they are. The second is the possesive pronoun of they. And the last one is the adverb of place, indicating a position for something of something. "she's standing right there."

We're/Were/Where The first is the contrction for we are. The second is the past tense of of the verb to be for the conjugation are. The last is another adverb of place, normally used for questions; "Where is my cupcake?"

Basic Mistakes: punctuation in dialogues

I'm going to introduce you to the concept of complex, compound and simple sentences. A simple sentence is that basic one that everyone knows, like "she has two flowers." One Subject, one verb and one object. A compound sentence combines two simple sentences with a conjuction (for, and, nor, by, or, yet) For example: "She has two flowers and she's going to give them away". A complex sentence has a dependent and independent sentence joined by another element (adverb, for instance). One sentence depends of the other to have meaning. "Although she never imagined this could happen, she had won his heart." The first sentence, marked by the adverb however is the dependent clause, whereas "she had won his heart" is the independent. Try to separate them... only one has meaning on its own, right?

Now, why am I telling you this? Because I've seen how people don't know how to use the right puntuation for complex sentence. One kind of complex sentence is the reportive speech. When you use verbs such as say, tell, speak, yell, and so on. In English we use the inverted commas "__". Well, all what goes between the inverted commas is the object of a sentence, all that can be replaced by a simple word, a "that". So you have to use a comma, not a period (unless the next sentence is not reporting).

For example.

wrong: "How do you do, Mr Darcy? It is a lovely day." Lizzie asked. -- It is wrong because here you have two sentences separated when they are connected and dependent. The first one, the speech, belongs to the second one. You could say "Lizzie asked 'How do you do, Mr Darcy? It is a lovely day." and all what you have between the inverted commas can be replaced by a "that". "Lizzie asked that". In this case "Lizzie asked" is the dependent clause because ask is a verb that demands of an object, in this case the speech. If we don't have the dialogue, we would ask "Lizzie asked what? It's not complete." See?

right: "How do you do, Mr Darcy? It is a lovely day," Lizzie asked.  -- This is the right form because we use a comma after the speech to show that indeed that was what Lizzie asked. In this case we just present the object before the verb. Also, we always use lowercase after the dialogue speech because they belong to the same sentence, even if there's an exclamation or question mark.

Also, every time you talk to someone, ask a direct question or just call for someone's name, you use a comma before the name.

It's "How are you today, Lizzie?" and never "How are you today Lizzie." Even if you don't notice it when you speak, there's a little pause before you mention the name, nickname, pet name, whatever. Plus, it's important or you might end up saying "Do you want to eat Lizzie?" instead of saying "Do you want to eat, Lizzie?"

Basic Mistakes: apostrophe

The apostrohpe is our friend, it helps us to turn two words into one (you're) or to show possesion (Lizzie's book). No, it's never used to make a word PLURAL! Never ever. NEVER!

No, guys. It's not "story's". It's never "DVD's". To make a word plural, you add the -S (or -ES in some cases, according to the vocalic ending of the word, like story--> stories).

The apostrophe (what's called Genetive S) is to show something belongs to someone. I know nowadays it's used for inanimated things or even animals, but the right use is only for people. You can use it for a team, band, or institution because those things "contain" people/staff. You can also use the genetive S for time, like "Today's plans"

So are we clear? Saying "your story's are great" is like saying "'are great' belongs to story and all that is yours."

You see that when you make these mistakes you are not just making a typo... you're saying a completely incoherent thing?

(This next part is Katie...)

Capitalization:  This Is Not How You Write A Sentence. There Is No Need For Capitalizing Every Single Word. 

That is one of my biggest pet peeves. 

Proper nouns. There are two types of nouns, common and proper. Common nouns are things such as teacher, girl, boy, baby, school, state, city. Proper nouns are usually one-of-a-kind, such as Professor Moniren. Joyce. Mr. Jordan. Hawaii. United States. Chile. University of Colorado. 

"The boy lived in a city." < it is using correct capitalization because it's not using a name for either the boy or the city.

"Derick lived in Miami, Florida." < it is using correct capitalization because it's a specific boy and a specific city.

"The Boy lived in a City." < it is not using correct capitalization because it's not specifying the boy's name or state.

"deric lived in miami, florida." < is not using correct capitalization because it is specifying the boy's name and state.

The first letter of every sentence should be capitalized, the first letter of a quotation (such as conversations), titles of books, titles of movies. Etc.

I might write a longer, full chapter on proper capitalization because this barely touched on the subject, but this is basic knowledge on how to use it properly.

There are many other basic mistakes, but these are all the ones I can think about. Maybe we can have, later, a Basic Grammar 2.0

Hoping this helped,
-Katie, Moni & Tina.

...Next entry - How To: Overcome Writer's Block