Lately I’ve heard so many people confuse “went” with “gone” that I decided it was worth a blog post on the topic. “Went” and “gone” are both variations of the verb “to go” but are used in different tenses. Here’s an explanation of the difference: WENT is the simple past tense of TO GO: […]
Read more
If you’re not familiar with the term “gerund,” it’s a noun that is created by adding “ing” to a verb. For example: Noun: To be Gerund: Being Noun: To write Gerund: Writing While gerunds are easy to use as simple subjects (Writing is important to me) or as objects (I love writing), they can be a […]
Read more
A lot of people out there are afraid to use the pronoun “me.” I think the aversion must start in elementary school, when you proudly declare “Me and Gloria are best friends!” and your mom shakes her head and says, “Gloria and I are best friends.” Mom is right because in that instance “I” is a […]
Read more
I’m always looking for ideas for this blog (as well as a good book to read), so I spend a chunk of my day keeping tabs on the publishing industry. Often when I stumble across an article about a new author, especially a new indie author, I head to Amazon to check out the book […]
Read more
Many people, authors included, tend to capitalize words that shouldn’t be capitalized, probably because they aren’t aware of the rules. Here’s a quick refresher course regarding mistakes I see all the time: Job titles Job titles are capitalized only when they come directly before the person’s name. For example: Correct: Luca Maestri is the chief […]
Read more
Are you confused about the difference between she/her and he/him? Here’s a quick lesson: She and he are subject pronouns. That means they are the subjects of a sentence, i.e., they represent a person doing something. For example: John wrote a book becomes he wrote a book Maria wrote a book becomes she wrote a book John and Maria […]
Read more
Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and someone tells a brief story about his friend Buddy. Chances are the storyteller will name Buddy just once and use “he” from there on because everyone listening to the story knows he’s talking about Buddy. If the storyteller were to say, “Buddy did this, and then Buddy did […]
Read more
I recently read two indie books that shared the following problem: they were both infested with run-on sentences. I don’t throw around the word “infested” very often, but I’m using it here to make a point. The run-on sentences ruined the reading experience for me. I was so distracted by the errors that I couldn’t […]
Read more
Today I’d like to talk about tenses, specifically when to use the preterit (past) tense versus the pluperfect (past perfect) tense. Here are two examples: Preterit tense: I wrote a book Pluperfect tense: I had written a book Both together: He wrote to me yesterday to tell me that he had read my book (he read my book before […]
Read more
If you’ve never heard of “active voice” or “passive voice,” don’t worry, you’re not alone. However, while you might not know the official terminology, I’m willing to bet you can easily spot the difference between the two. In the active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the acting. For example: I am writing this […]
Read more