Ellen’s Advice for Authors: Twelve Important Rules of English that Shouldn’t be Forgotten

Ellen’s Advice for Authors: Twelve Important Rules of English that Shouldn’t be Forgotten
With thanks to creator Frank L. Visco

If you ask me, there are never enough rules to follow when writing. Frankly, a dozen of them barely scratch the surface. If I had my way, a yearly reading of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves would be mandatory for every writer. And I’d just as soon include The Chicago Manual of Style to that curriculum, being that it’s as important to authors as, say, Izaak Walton’s 1653 The Compleat Angler was to English fishing enthusiasts. (Really, it was considered a bible in its time, and that’s how I feel about Chicago.)

Writing is a creative process, and every writer has his or her own voice. The benefits of honing that voice means your writing will flow better, you’ll meet your self-imposed daily word count more quickly, and your books will have that certain style that readers will recognize.

But is it possible you’ve become so familiar with your voice that you’ve grown a bit slack? Sometimes it’s helpful to stop and think about your writing from a grammatical point of view. Lazy writing habits are easy to fall into, and the lapses I’ve seen most often in my thirty years as a freelance editor usually involve the use of tired, trite, and abused language.

If the last formal English class you attended was held sometime in the last century, then I strongly urge you to look at the list below, which highlights a dozen sensible but often neglected or forgotten rules of English. Keeping them in front of mind will help your personal style to shine.

I’ve listed them in no particular order, and I don’t think explanations or examples are necessary. To use a tired cliché of my own: They speak for themselves.

• Avoid clichés like the plague. (At the end of the day, they’re dead as doornails.)
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
• Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; don’t repeat the same things over and over. Doing so is extremely superfluous.
• Always be more or less specific.
• Run-on sentences are to be avoided because your readers, whose minds may by this point be overly saturated with words, will start wishing that what you really should have done is to use commas and periods to break up your sentence into more digestible pieces.
• Exaggeration is a trillion times worse than understatement.
• Do you really need that rhetorical question?
• While exceptional vocabulary is laudable, voluble verbosity ends up obscuring the designated objective of your communication.
• In a sentence, the nouns has to match the verbs.
• Never use no double negatives.
• In writing, few things are more annoying, generally speaking, than commas when there are, for example, too many of them.
• Proofread your work so you don’t some words out or forget to finish.

 

Adapted from Frank L. Visco’s How to Write Good.

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Ellen Tanner Marsh is an obsessive grammarian who wrestles daily with the dilemma of maintaining her own personal writing style while at the same time observing the strict grammatical construction rules of the English language.

Although born in Germany, she has lived in the Lowcountry near Charleston, South Carolina, for nearly forty years. She’s still married to her high school sweetheart, a lifelong surfer, with whom she raised two sons. When Ellen isn’t writing, she tends her flower garden and fruit trees and volunteers with local animal rescues. Living close to the beach means plenty of walks with her own rescue dogs. And after all this time in the South, she’s finally developed a passion for steamed oysters, shrimp & grits, and sweet iced tea.

Find out more about her on her website http://ellentannermarsh.com/

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/etannermarsh

About The Forbidden Gems Trilogy

Journey from Cornwall to India and Charleston in historical romance trilogy following the exciting fate of the Kohinoor Diamond

‘New York Times’ bestselling author Ellen Tanner Marsh returns to the world of romance with the publication of her award-winning novels in ‘The Forbidden Gems Trilogy’

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Thirty years ago, Ellen Tanner Marsh took the romance world by storm with the publication of her first historical romance novel. An instant New York Times bestseller, the book garnered critical acclaim and earned the young author legions of fans.Known for her flair for writing high adventure and steamy romance, Ellen is back with the beloved characters of her first bestsellers cast into new stories written for a contemporary audience.

A love saga that spans generations and continents, “The Forbidden Gems Trilogy” will sweep you into the darkly passionate world of British India with “Diamond Dark” (July 2018), sail away to antebellum Charleston in “Diamond Fire” (September 2018), and follow the love story of a new generation in “Diamond Deep” (January 2019).

Woven through these lush tales of love is the re-imagined fate of the Kohinoor Diamond, now a priceless part of the British crown jewels.

More about the trilogy HERE

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips