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Source: Pet Peeves #OpenBook Blog Hop

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Stevie Turner

Welcome to this week’s blog hop.  Today the topic is:

‘What are your pet peeves regarding grammar and spelling?’

I’ve listed my main peeves below.  I inwardly scream when I see these howlers in books that I’m given to review:

• An inability to differentiate between their, they’re and there.
• Using ‘should of‘ instead of ‘should have‘.
• Using ‘would of‘ instead of ‘would have‘.
• Confusing bought with brought.
• An inability to differentiate between your and you’re.
• Using capital letters inappropriately.
• Not using speech marks, or just mixing speech up with the rest of the sentence.
• Not using any commas.
• Missing apostrophes, especially the possessive apostrophe.  I think this one is my worst peeve!
• Putting in an apostrophe when one should not be there.  This is my second worst peeve!
• One big block of writing instead of several paragraphs.
• An inability…

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Richard Dee’s Blog Article

It’s the Little Things

What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?

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Oh, yes, it’s that little drip-drip-drip that drives us crazy in grammar as much as in our bedroom when we’re trying to sleep.

There’s a gap in the gutters of our house where the chimney climbs the outside wall and it allows a small section of roof where moisture can roll from a higher roof onto the garage, where it strikes the flashing for the chimney. This is just the other side of our bedroom wall from our pillows.

This time of year (or if it’s raining), it’s a drip-drip-drip-drip water feature that isn’t unpleasant. It’s like sleeping next to a small waterfall. But we had a cold night and the drips slowed to drip … drip … drip … urgggh. You know what I mean. Chinese Water Torture.

Grammar can be like that too. There are things that just drive me crazy, but they’re usually small and repeated over and over and over and over ….

Alright Isn’t

“All right.” That’s the only correct way to write that term in formal English — that includes in a novel — unless you’re writing an accent. It’s not “alright”. It could be “a’ight” or “allight” if you’re writing that accent, but if you’re not trying to recreate a eubonics or redneck accent in your novel, use “all right.” Please.

Pause and Think

Overuse of the word “that”. It’s a journalism thing. Back in the day, newspapers had to set type by hand and paper and ink weren’t cheap, so there were words we wanted to eliminate as unnecessary. “That” is just such a word. Often the use of “that” is perfectly grammatical, but if you’re following a principle of omitting needless words, leave out the “that.”

Cautiously. Although “that” is optional a lot of the time, you can’t assume it’s optional wherever you see it. Sometimes it’s mandatory. And even when it’s optional, it’s sometimes still a good idea to keep it.

So, when I see “that” in someone else’s writing (and most especially when I read my own writing), I circle back to it and ask “it is necessary.” Most common verbs (such as “say”, “think”, “know”, “claim”, “hear”, “believe”) are bridge verbs and don’t need “that” Non-bridge verbs carry extra meaning. An example of the verb “whisper”, which carries descriptive meaning in the verb. It sounds odd to say, “He whispered he wanted another root beer” instead of “He whispered that he wanted another root beer.” Not crashingly bad, but just a little off.

Newspapers often ignore the difference between bridge verbs and non-bridge verbs and delete a “that” after verbs where it would sound better to leave it in. Which also bugs me.

Kinda of Creepy

It’s the little things that usually drive me crazy. My biggest one isn’t actually a grammar thing. It’s a logic thing. My teeth grind when writers write things about people’s eyes “dwelling” on someone, or “being on the floor”, or “turned out the window.”

Uh, no! The character’s eyes need to stay in their head where eyeballs belong. Their gaze can dwell on the pretty girl, drop to the floor or turn out the window. I end up with this word-picture of eyeballs rolling all over the place and it’s not a lovely view. STOP!

There are probably as many examples as there are writers. Let’s see what bugs my fellow writers.

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Lela’s Medium article on Alaska Reopening Its Economy

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Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?

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Settings are almost a character in fiction. Some genres focus more on world-building than others and I write in three genres.

In Daermad Cycle (The Willow Branch and Mirklin Wood) the setting is the world of Daermad and the kingdom of Celdrya and neighboring nations. It’s largely a product of my imagination, based somewhat on reality, particularly the old cities of Europe. It’s a rich varied world with mountain villages and ocean-side cities, vast fields of grain dotted with farmsteads and trackless forests. People make their living fishing, farming, selling herbs, herding horses, serving wine and ale at state affairs, and a million and one other trades. Rivers divide the land into regions, acting as transportation routes as well as borders. My goal is to provide the reader with the feeling of having walked the land and talked to the people. I want readers to feel the mud rolling downhill during a storm, for example — to feel as if they stand off to the side and see the character in that environment.

Transformation Project (Life as We Knew It and the rest of the series) exists in a world that is the United States the day after tomorrow following a series of massive terrorist attacks that thoroughly disrupts life as we know it. There’s a lot less world-building involved simply because we know this world. I picked a town in Kansas and learned a great deal about it, gave it another name and used it as a template for my main setting. I use that real town to answer questions about how the off-ramps on the interstate work, what utilities are available, whether there’s a hospital or grocery store, a Walmart or Costco. Other towns in the series are places we know — Wichita, Hays, Hutchinson. I changed the name of my town because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I place a story in a real-life setting and then realize I can’t do something because the real-life community isn’t set up that way. Back in the 1970s, someone wrote a novel about Fairbanks, Alaska, and then screwed up on some of the details. It wasn’t that great of a story to begin with, but the erroneous details made it painful to read, which I had to for an Alaska Literature class in college. Required reading and it’s wrong. Just shut my head in a car door, please. So I used a real-life town as a template, but moved things around and didn’t use the same road names and called it Emmaus, Kansas — which doesn’t exist. I still want the reader to feel that they could pull off I70 and find this town because it is the world my characters inhabit and the reader is more engaged with the characters if the characters are set like gems within a rich tapestry.

I followed the same process with building the setting in Red Kryptonite Curve. I picked a Long Island town and used it as a template so that I would get the details right, but then I renamed the town and made enough changes that you couldn’t reasonably say it is that town. This allows me to have access to real-life facts — like bus schedules, a description of the harbor, a description of the downtown area, details about the school system — while also moving things around and making stuff up to fit the needs of the story. Peter is a modern American more attune to malls and concert venues, but I want his interactions with his world to seem authentic, to make the readers feel like they’re right there with him.

My view of setting is that most of life is influenced by what goes on around us. I live a certain way in Fairbanks, Alaska, because it’s a frontier town on the edge of a vast wilderness with a certain degree of isolation, long, dark, cold winters, and brief, intense summers when the sun doesn’t go down. People living in other towns at other latitudes live different lives because their setting is different. With a few details, you can build a world that puts characters into an environment rather than just floating in space. This makes for a much richer and more engaging story that shows characters acting like real people in real world settings. And if I get stuck describing something, I can probably find a photo out on the Internet that will provide me with the visual I need to massage my imagination.

The setting of a scene can give added depth to the character’s actions. For example, in Red Kryptonite Curve, Peter often describes the Wyngates’ backyard has having rose bushes that he hates. They are pretty to look at, but they have no fragrance and there are thrones. They’re a metaphor for his mother who planted them and adored them, and then ran off to Florida with her lover. Peter would take a machete to them if he could. Without really going into the relationship with his mother, you can surmise who she is and what she is like through the inclusion of her roses in the setting. And, thus, the setting becomes not just the world the characters inhabit, but a character in and of itself.

Let’s go see what my fellow blog-hoppers think on the topic.

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What are the best tools you use on your blog? (widgets, templates, etc.)

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I’m cheap, so if it isn’t something free WordPress offers, I don’t purchase it. I have a few widgets, pages and the Sharing feature. Now and again, I think I should probably completely redo the blog, but that takes time away from writing and I’m just not that interested in doing it.

My widgets are mostly to help readers find my social media sites. Pages are focused on different subjects that the blog has highlighted.

The Sharing feature is the tool I use the most and it’s the one that is most helpful to me because by hitting PUBLISH I can send my article to a variety of linked social media sites. It is less helpful than it used to be because a change about a year ago now sends the article to a Facebook page. Yes, that page gets some traffic, but nothing like my main Facebook feed. So, I now have to make a separate step of sending the post to my Facebook feed. I would love it if WordPress allowed an automatic share to MeWe.

I think blog tools are great. I wish I had more time to teach myself how to make more use of them. Maybe I’ll have to take a weekend sometime to just do it. I wonder what my fellow blog-hoppers think on this subject.

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