Common grammar errors in writing, plus helpful hints!

What the Hell is This?

Hey folks! It's time for a grammar session! Despite how obviously unenforced such a thing like "grammar" is on this website, I do recall seeing a number of aspiring writers; story was fantastic, characters were good...

But their writing looked like this:

"An the hero unsheeths his sword! It was really silver, and surounded by a aura."

That made me a little sick to write that. Continuing on.

I'm not calling myself a grammar professor or expert, but... I know some things. Considering I've not completed a grammar test under a B+ since about Sophomore year of high school. Haughty? Most undoubtedly so.

But as not everyone can be like myself (an amazing and talented and glorious grammar-perfection extraordinaire), I've compiled a basic list of common grammar rules, found broken especially frequent in stories. Asterisks indicate that there is a sub-topic that will be discussed further in in the "Character Dialogue" section.

Past, Present, Future Tense: Makes Me Tense Thinking About It.

Tenses: They determine when and event is taking place. When you add "-ed" to a verb, this makes your verb occur in the past. "Talked," "shoved," "sexed," all occur in the past. When an "-s" or nothing at all is added, this makes the verb occur in the present; it's happening now. "I talk," "she talks," etc. Future tense is a little more difficult. No suffix is added at the end of the verb, but another group of words such as "am/are/is going to," or "will" is added before the verb, giving you "I will talk," "I am going to talk," "He is going to talk," etc.. English is redundant this way, whereas other languages use suffix-changes. Because they're smart.

Many writers already know tenses. If you speak-a de Engrish, you'll probably know, whether you know the actual terms or not. The most common problem with tenses though is a lack of consistency. IF YOU CHOOSE A TENSE FOR A STORY, YOU MUST STICK WITH IT. Excluding when a character speaks. The world-narrator, however, must keep consistent. If the narrator uses past-tense, then a chapter or paragraph should not suddenly skip into the present tense. The only time I've seen this pulled successfully is in the Great Gatsby, when the narrator describes the party in present-tense. This is to give the feeling that this party could be happening this way at any time, not just in the past. However, most are not F. Scott Fitzgeralds, so I suggest avoiding it. Again though, when a character speaks, most rules are thrown out the window.

Helpful hint: Present tense narrative style is generally frowned upon by professional or experienced writers. Past tense should generally be used in narrative stories. Again, if you're especially skilled, you can attempt this, but it's very difficult to get a story to not look like a self-insert piece of fiction.

Sentence Length. It Should Vary. This is Good.

Many times, authors block out sentences in short, choppy bits. This will tire out your poor readers' eyes! Make one sentence short, another long; fill up an entire paragraph with long sentence (using proper techniques!). Even if your sentences aren't necessariy short, if they're all about seven or eight sentences long, your reader will still grow bored. Use different kinds of punctuation! Here are some examples:

1. Colons. Ha ha, she said "colons." Colons have a number of functions (besides excretory). Colons may be used to give logical conclusions to statements ("There can be but one victor: me!"), to describe ("There are two dogs: a black one, and a brown one."), to use in place of quotation ("Matthew always talked about nonsense: Grammar is great!") to define ("Brains: the appendix for the Ancient Egyptians."), to denote a subtitle ("Star Wars: Jackson vs. Fawcett."), and a few other things that really don't come up very often, or have to do with things that don't concern sentencing.



2. Semi-colons. I'unno what corresponds to that bodily. Anyway, a semi-colon connects two related phrases, oftentime incomplete sentences. Such as, "Love lasts; roses do not." Semi-colons can also be used between one sentence transitioning into another, with the help an adverb. Example: "I like to eat; however, I do not like to be eaten." Semi-colons can also be used in lists, after regular colons. Example: "I saw four birds: a teal canary, who sang on key; a grey parrot, who liked to talk; and a yellow budgie, who did things I can't think of."



3. The Em Dash, or "Long Dash." Looking like a longer dash ("—") than a hyphen , or two dashes, if your computer does not automatically merge them into one, a dash means a sudden, interrupting thought that is stronger than a comma, but weaker than a period—like this. Spaces should not be used around the dash, nor should they be used around a hyphen, for that matter.



4. Commas. Perhaps the most abused of the four. If you don't know how to use a comma, I really, REALLY pity you. Generally, it is used to seperate parts of a sentence. I learned that you put it in where you should breathe. Such as, "I looked in the drawer, finding nothing." Here: this Wiki article should help. COMMA, PLZ?
   

Not too hard, now is it?

"A" vs. "An."

Rrrgh! You have no idea how much this one gets under my skin. "A" and "an" are indefinate articles, something completely unnecessary but like good English speakers, we use anyway. They tell your reader that whatever the noun is that you're explaining is a one, an entity. "A" dog, "an ostrich," etc. But where to use "a" and where to use "an"?

To put it simply, use "an" when the word following begins with a vowel sound. Not necessarily a vowel! Use "a" when the following word begins with a consonant.

But! Be careful: there are a number of words that can create a good deal of confusion; words beginning with "h" or a y-sound can be particularily so. What about the word "hotel," or "ewe"?

For those, Merriem-Webster suggests, "You choose the article that suits your own pronunciation." If you pronounce hotel as "oh-tel," then use, "an hotel." If you pronounce hotel as, "ho-tel," then use, "a hotel." If you pronounce "ewe" as "yew," then use, "a ewe." If you pronounce "ewe" as "ew," then use, "an ewe," though I don't think "ewe" is technically pronounced that way.
You get the idea.

ELLIPSES, ELLIPSES, MY COUNTRY FOR ELLIPSES!

Now, how many times have you seen this? "It was............Dumblydore!" Okay, perhaps not in that exact phrasing, but how many times have you seen so many (or more) ellipses, or periods, used to convey a dramatic pause? Not too much, I pray. This is an amateur ploy (though, in reality, I HAVE seen this used in the Paper Mario games; I won't go into that). Not only this, but the sentence above has no space after the last ellipse. It's as if it's one long word seperated by a thousand periods!
The Rule: Three is the magic number. No more, no less for dramatic pause. Put a single space in front of the first ellipse, and behind the last ellipse. If being used at the front of a sentence (as this is a rather recent development in English, I'm not entirely sure what more experienced writers think of it), the "most correct" form has been found to be, "ending period, space, three ellipses, space, beginning word." When followed by punctuation, omit the last space after the third ellipsis.

...? ...! ...?! ...,

YOU'RE VS. YOUR.

There IS difference. "You're" is a contraction of "you are." Whereas "your" is a possesive pronoun. But how do you know which one to use? Take a look at the sentence you've used one of them in; if you spell it out as "you are," and the sentence makes sense, then use it. If it does not make sense, then use the other. Example: "You're dog is in my yard!" Let's break that down into, "You are dog is in my yard!" Does it make sense? No. So, we replace "you're" with "your," and what do we get? "Your dog is in my yard!" Much better!
How about vice-versa? As this is the more common form of the mistake. "Your so wonderful and beautiful, Edward my sparkly beauty!" Wrong... in so, so many ways... Correct form: "You're so wonderful and beautiful, Edward my sparkly beauty!"

"Their" vs. "There" vs "They're."

Their: Possesive pronoun. Used to illustrate what belong to multiple people, not including yourself. "Their pig."
There: A place. "Over there." "There and here."
They're: A contraction of "they are," illustrating that a group of people is something. I.e., "They're cold," meaning, "They are cold." If you can't substitute "they are" when using one of the three, that means that you're using one of the first two, from which it's easy tp pick which one to use. Can you substitute "they are," in this sentence? "Their giraffe just had a baby!"

The Holy Apostrophes.

Apostrophes; for the most part, used in two forms (excluding mathematical): To show possession, or to show that something has been omitted. DO NOT USE IT IN THE MIDDLE OF W WORD, BECAUSE IT LOOKS COOL even if it looks really stupid to everyone else.
Rules of Possession:

1. Add apostrophe-s to the end of a noun to create possession. To show that whisers belong to a cat, you might say, "a cat's whiskers." Or, for example, to illustrate that a bone belongs to a dog: "a dog's bone." Do not use apostraphes to illustrate that there is more than one of an object. Multiple dogs should be written as "dogs," not "dog's."


2. Add a single apostraphe to multiple objects or people possessing something or some things. For example, "Some cats' whiskers," or "Do these bones belong to your dogs, Sam and Riley? Yes, these are the dogs' bones."


3. Add a single apostraphe, when the word ends with anything similar to an "s"-sound. Example: Confucious', Jesus', Loch Ness', princess'.


4. *
   

Rules of Omission:
Apostrophes are also often used to substitute a letter, or even multiple letters. Such as the word, "didn't." This word is not only a contraction or "did not," but also omits the "o" from between "n" and "t." Why English decided to do this, I've no clue, but I also know they were fond of doing so, with words such as, "fair'st," and "th'effect," meaning "fairest" and "the effect," respectively.

'Tweren't no good.

Double negatives are the epitome of uneducated speaking, when used in any other area besides humor. (Fun fact: double negatives were once commonly accepted in English. Remember though, that this was about six hundred years ago that this was standard. Other modern languages, however, do accept them, such as Russian.) DO NOT use them as a narrator, as you will have people staring at your work, wondering "What hick wrote this?" If that is your goal, then ignore me (for some, it may just be). However, I can understand where some people might use them by mistake. You just can't quite tell what word is "positive" and what word is "negative" sometimes! So, to help you out, here's a list of words that are "negative," or create a negative sentence when used once. ("I do not read Shakespeare.") Remember in math, how a positive times a positive gives you a positive, a positive times a negative gives you a negative, and a negative times a negative gives you a positive? Same rule applies.
Negative:
No
Not
None
Nothing
Nowhere
Neither<Nobody
No one
Hardly
Scarcely
Barely

The Emotes:

Emotes/emoticons.
No.
Just... no.
You want to use these in chats? Fine. Forums posts? Fine. Not in literature, be it fanfiction, "original" fiction, or whatever. Try putting these anywhere on an official paper or document, and you will be laughed out of the institution.

Multipleeee Letterrrrrs.

I personally, enjoy writing phonetically for my characters, which means that the issue of just how many letters to add becomes an issue every so often. I enjoy writing phonetically; it's fun, because it helps the reader understand the character's voice, as you hear it in your head. However... I have often seen, even outside of dialogue, narrators use multiple letters to convey the length of a sound. Such as, "And I was all, 'No waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.......!'" Ignoring the multiple-periods problem we dicussed earlier, there are simply far too many As used in the word "way." Technically, in the most proper of English, more letters than what is originally called for is too many. Personally, I say, stick to two extra letters at once, similar to the ellipses-rule. For example, "No waaay...!" with two extra As, added on to the first.
Try not to multiply any letters though in published pieces.

When aND wHERE To Capitalize.

Ever seen a comment, or even piece of fiction (Holy Powers that Maybe Exist forbid) that looks like this? "Hey That Art Looks Great! You Should Do More." TOO MANY CAPITALS. However, as there are so many things you do and do not capitalize, I'm just going to give you this link instead.

"Quotation Marks."

Honestly, there are so many different rules and clauses for quotation marks (that differ in American English and British English), that I'm going to link you to this page which shortens and explains far better than I would. Please look here... please. Quotation marks, admittedly can be hard in a few of those rare cases, which are abundant in this page, so don't look to me for beautiful quoting examples. Just, you know, look to me for everything else for I AM perfect.
... Maybe I should bullet-proof my window now...

But it's for the luuuulz...!

I understand that sometimes you wish to be funny, when writing prose or poetry. That's fine. Besides emoticons and ellipses, it's perfectly okay to break these rules for the sake of humor. Every once in a great while. If your humor consists of humor brought by bad grammar useage only... you may want to reconsider a career as a humor-writer.

Dialogue.

And of course... we come to the area where almost every one of these rules (save for emoticons and ellipses again) is thrown out the window. If your character is uneducated, or doesn't care, guess what? You don't have to be so stringent with grammar. In fact, you may purposefully neglect grammar, for your character's sake. Here is where you get to use double negatives, choppy sentences, wrong tenses, etc. Two of my favorite examples are eye-dialects, and phonetic spelling. In some cases, these may be the same thing, but the main difference is that eye dialects spell words in an incorrect way, though they may be pronounced exactly the same, so as to appear incorrect, and give the reader a hint that perhaps whoever is speaking is not literate, or not very. Phonetic spelling generally indicates that a word is going to be pronounced as it is spelled, which may be different than how would be pronounced, if spelled correctly.
Eye-dialect example (lets make the character a ninth-grade drop-out): "Well, offizer, I wuz going ta get something..."
Phonetic spelling example (let's make the character Scottish): "Wull, ohff'ser, Ah wuz goin' ta ge' sohmethin'..."
*As you can see, in phonetic spelling, I've used the apostrophe to indicate that letters have been omitted. For some accents, if you so choose to use phonetic spelling, apostrophe-use may be rampant.

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Hopefully, this solves many-a problem for new/n00by writers. Yes, I've seen mistakes in all of these. Yes, certain ones tick me off more than others. If you can follow most of these though... it really should solve a vast majority of any writing problems.
Any questions? Want a part 2? Want me to STFU? See me after class. Or y'know, leave a comment. One of those might work.