Category Archives: writing tips

To comma, or not to comma? That is the question.

Posted on March 27, 2017 | Leave a comment

Which way would you write this phrase:  “red, white, and blue” or “red, white and blue”?

In Maine, a court case involving around $10 million in back overtime pay came down to just this:  Is the comma before the word “and” needed in a series?

If you are thinking, “You gotta be kidding,” no I’m not.  The case of O’Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, settled this month in a US Appeals Court in Maine, focused on whether some drivers deserved overtime.  That decision—yes, they do deserve overtime– came down to the lack of a comma in one of Maine’s overtime laws.

Here is the Maine law stating which workers don’t deserve overtime pay:

The canning, processing, preserving,
freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.

The problem is the lack of a comma after the word shipment.  Is the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution of” to be taken as a whole?  Or are the shipment and distribution two separate categories, neither of which deserves overtime?  If the law had a comma after the word shipment, distribution would not require overtime pay.

The court ruled that the lack of a comma after “shipment” made the law ambiguous even though it follows the written guidelines in the Maine Legislative Drafting Manual.  The court sided with the drivers distributing milk, saying they were entitled to overtime.

The AP Stylebook, which most reporters consult for grammar issues, says the final comma before “and” is not needed in most cases any more than is a comma needed for a two item series (bread and butter; not bread, and butter).  However, the style manuals used in colleges and universities do require the comma, and public schools where I live, in Georgia, teach that the comma is required.

There is a name for the comma before the word “and.”  It is called the Oxford comma.  I haven’t heard of a word for the lack of a comma, but for this discussion we might call it the AP comma rule.

Which practice do you use?  The Oxford comma?  The AP comma rule?  Usually I use the AP comma rule unless doing so leads to confusion.  Sometimes the AP comma rule can lead to what seems like an appositive rather than a continuation of a series, such as in “I want to thank my two political science teachers, President Obama and Hillary Clinton.”  If omitting the comma could lead to confusion, I include the comma.

The tendency in US writing is to leave out commas when the sentence is clear without punctuation.  For example, years ago I was taught that introductory adverbs like “now,” “later” and “then” need to be followed by a comma.  Yet the comma in “Then, I went home” seems silly.  I was also taught that compound sentences should use a comma after the first clause, but in the short sentence, “I fell and I hurt my leg,” a comma after “fell” seems ridiculous.

The first rule in writing anything is “Be clear.”  If leaving out a comma leads to ambiguity, use a comma. Otherwise, unless you are following a particular style book, the choice is yours.

By the way, when Shakespeare wrote “To be, or not to be,” in Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet, he used the Oxford comma.

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Posted in comma use, compound sentence, writing rules, writing tips

Should my child do reading and writing in the same lesson if the lesson is supposed to focus on writing?

Posted on February 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

EPSON MFP imageAs a tutor, this is an issue I have struggled with.  Most of the time, I combine reading and writing.  Here’s why:

  • A kindergartener or even a sixth grader has little personal experience to write about. They quickly exhaust “my dog” or “my family” as topics.  It makes sense for me to provide a topic to write about.  A quick and easy way to do that is to supply a picture book or a short essay.  But if I learn the student has taken an outing over the weekend, I switch gears and ask the student to write from his or her experience.  I might need to generate many questions about the outing to develop enough material to write about, but a personal experience trumps a reading experience, especially for young children.
  • Reading gives students a quick start. I might ask a young children to read part of a picture book (limiting the time spent reading to between five and ten minutes of an hour-long lesson).  For an older child, I might bring an essay or news story (again, limiting the time spent reading and discussing it.)  Our discussions focus on ideas related to writing, such as organization, characters, setting, suspense and conclusions.  Then we talk about the kind of writing I expect the student to write.
  • For students who don’t like to be told what to write, I might bring two reading selections, offering a choice. The child has a sense of control and I am happy with either choice.
  • Reading gives students various genres to analyze or to use as prompts. If the student is writing a persuasive essay, for example, reading one first offers ideas for organization and vocabulary.  I focus less on the content and more on the structure, details, figures of speech–the writing–during a writing lesson.
  • Reading offers excellent models for writing. If I am teaching how to write a formal essay with a thesis, obvious topic sentences and a good conclusion, reading such an essay first is a great way to begin the lesson.  We can talk about what makes the example good (or poor if it is poor) and how it could have been improved.

Everyone writes to be read, even if the reader is a later-day version of himself or herself.  We talk about this during our lessons, offering a solid reason to read before we begin and just as solid a reason to read the student’s work after it is complete.

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Posted in how to find writing topics, how to teach writing, persuasive essay, writing tips

When to use parentheses

Posted on February 19, 2017 | Leave a comment

Parentheses are marks of punctuation used to separate a word, phrase, or sentence from the rest of a sentence.  Here are some suggestions on how to use them.

parenthesesIf the parentheses contain words which are part of a sentence but not a complete sentence themselves, don’t use a period or a comma within the  parentheses.  The exception is when the words within the parentheses are a question or an exclamation.  Then use a question mark or an exclamation point as appropriate.

  • My mother (but not my father) has blue eyes.
  • Both of my mother’s parents had blue eyes (no surprise there!).

If the words in parentheses are a complete sentence, use punctuation at the end of the sentence, within the parentheses. 

  • My father and his mother had brown eyes. (But they each had at least one parent with blue eyes.)
  • My father’s father had blue eyes. (So why didn’t my father have one brown eye and one blue eye?)

Parentheses within parentheses can be grammatically correct, but they can be confusing to the reader.  It’s a good idea to rewrite those ideas using one or no parentheses.

  • I have brown eyes (the brown from my father (who probably had a recessive blue gene, like me)).
  • I have brown eyes.  The brown gene came from my father, who probably had a recessive blue gene, as I do.

When a name can be reduced to its initials, say the complete name first, and immediately after the name put the initials in parentheses.  Later, when you use the initials in place of the name, you need to use an article in front of the initials.

  • Both my mother’s parents were born in the United States (US), but neither of my father’s parents were born in the US.

When writing a research paper, you will be directed by your teacher to to use a particular style book.  That style book will have  information on how to use parentheses for citations and specific Latin abbreviations.  If you are not told to use a particular style book, you can use the Associated Press (A.P.) style book, or you can use a dictionary.  Name that book in the references part of your paper.

In general, it is better not to use parentheses if you can separate information with commas, or if you can rewrite idea to obviate the need for parentheses.  Too many parentheses can muddy the meaning, and the first rule in good writing is to be clear.

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Posted in citing evidence, clarity, comma use, grammar, parentheses, writing rules, writing tips

Getting one reluctant child writer to write

Posted on February 12, 2017 | Leave a comment

Last week I worked with a third grader on writing.  Knowing that it would take time to figure out a topic, I brought a picture book which she read in five minutes.  She read in an engaged fashion, commenting as we read and paging back and forth to check a fact or to compare an illustration.  She understood the book well, including the emotional inferences.

EPSON MFP image

I asked her to write down the story in her own words.

No.

I asked her to make changes in the story—a different setting, a boy instead of a girl main character, or a different ending.

No.

I suggested we make a list of what she liked about the story and what she didn’t like, and we write about that.

No.

This went on for a while.  Not prepared to struggle any longer, I suggested we move on to grammar.

Today I returned with a different strategy.  Yesterday I went to the library and checked out a handful of books that I thought would delight her.  Before today’s lesson began, I said that I would give her the books to read if for our writing lesson she would promise to write about the book we had read last week.  She looked at the stack of books and looked at me.

Okay.

But after a half a dozen lines of writing, she stopped, eying the enticing books.

“Done.”

“Not done.”

I pulled out a piece of notebook paper and started writing my version of the story we had read the past week.  She read over my shoulder.

“Janie X. Cuse?  What kind of a name is that?”

“A funny one.”

“Hey, you put my baby sister in there.”

“Inspiration.”

“Whoever heard of a teacher named Mr. Snooze?”

“You did.  Just now.”

Shereturned to her writing, scowling at me.  She changed the word “school” to “Small Creek Elementary” because she goes to “Big Creek Elementary.”  She named the teacher in her writing Mr. Snooze.

“Hey, you took my teacher’s name and put it in your story,” I said.

She grinned.

“Well, if you are going to do that, then I want you to write the name of this character in my story in Chinese.”

She erased the name I had chosen, thought for a minute, and in Chinese characters wrote. . .something.

“What does it say?”

She told me—in Chinese.

“But what does it mean?”  She grinned.

And so we went on.

This girl is motivated by competition.  And by humor.  And by good books to read.

Whatever it takes.

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Posted in motivating writers, writing tips

Read John Truby’s “The Anatomy of Story” if you are a fiction writer

Posted on January 31, 2017 | Leave a comment

If you are an aspiring novelist or fiction writer, may I recommend a good how-to book?  It’s not new, but it’s new to me.

Cover of John Truby's The Anatomy Of StoryJohn Truby’s The Anatomy of Story; 22 steps to becoming a master storyteller has been around since 2007.  I’ve seen it recommended in other how-to writing books, but the “22 steps” part of the title put me off.  And after reading the book and rereading parts, the “22 steps” still seem like a juggernaut to an aspiring novelist.

Yet the book is a masterpiece.  Several points ring true.

  • Every story must have a single pathway to its climax and end. Even stories with as many side steps as Homer’s Odyssey must lead the main character and reader toward a single goal.
  • Every compelling story has one main character (hero) fighting along that pathway toward his or her goal.
  • If the hero’s enemy is an abstraction (a company, a war or evil) the reader will engage more if that enemy can be embodied into a single human enemy such as Darth Vader or Voldemort.
  • The main character must have a flaw to overcome by the end of the story. How he overcomes his flaw is the real story.  Harry Potter must defeat Voldemort.  But Harry is a meek eleven-year-old at his story’s start.  How he overcomes his fears and grows into a man brave enough to defeat Voldemort is the real story.
  • If the main character makes difficult moral choices (not just action choices) on his pathway, the story gains depth and the possibility of greatness.

One inclusion I particularly like is the many novels and movies which the author analyzes when he makes his various points.  I have long known that I like The Godfather, Shane, Chinatown and Casablanca, but now I know why.  It’s because these stories contain so many of the elements which Truby says are essential in great stories.

As for the 22 steps?  Because so much else rings true in The Anatomy of Story, I accept that the 22 steps are necessary for a great novel.  Nobody said writing a novel is easy, and Truby says writing a great novel is rare.  But he has created a formula.  If you are writing fiction, check it out.

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Posted in fiction writing, narrative writing, teaching writing, writing tips