I've always been a fan of the word that. Some of it comes from doing city council minutes for years where we don't do dialogue even though that's really what we're taking down. Using that in this case takes the place of your quotation marks.
However, it's easy to go a little crazy with it when you're a writer. You can check out my findings in this post from last year here--and how many times I deleted that.
An option might be using which instead.
Believe it or not, there's a difference.
From the Gregg Reference Manual (aka Grammar Bible), p. 336, item 1062b [I added the pink and blue for effect]:
Which and that are used when referring to places, objects, and animals. Which is always used to introduce nonessential clauses, and that is ordinarily used to introduce essential clauses.
So what does that mean?
If the clause (something I would call an aside comment--kinda like this one) can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence, it's nonessential. So use which.
The building that is painted brown is for sale.
The building, which is painted brown, is for sale.
In the first case, you're restricting it to only that brown building. In the second case, the 'which is painted brown' is merely additional information about the building.
Since that is (usually) essential, you don't use a comma.
Happy News!
If you haven't heard yet, the awesome Deana Barnhart has an agent! And wait until you find out the process that led to this great event. You can check it out at Deana's blog here.
This Saturday I'm going to the Got Stories conference put on by Rhemalda Publishing. I know a couple of authors who will be presenting there. Should be fun.
So, we've all heard that we're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. Yet we all speak doing exactly that. Are we wrong?
Well, what does the Gregg Reference Manual say about it (section 1080 a-c, p. 347)?
Short questions and statements frequently end with prepositions.
What is this made of?
Where did he come from?
You have nothing to worry about.
What about you? Do you have any interesting grammar rules that you have to jump around in your writing? Or any special secrets that make navigating the English language easier?
In general, do not use a hyphen to set off a prefix at the beginning of a word or a suffix at the end of a word (exceptions ex- and –elect.)
Modern example: multi-purpose is now multipurpose
Be wary of spell checkers that may urge you to insert hyphens after the prefixes.
Prefixes and suffixes are pretty cool actually. They should make you feel powerful because you can create a word. And speaking of the word create, it's a perfect transition to another exception to the above rule. Let's say you create a work of art (something written, of course!), but your house burned down, destroying your masterpiece. Now you have to recreate it.
Oh, but wait. Isn't there already a word "recreate"?
Yup.
By using that word, suddenly your reader has to stop and think about usage (a bit like the list of words at the beginning of this post).So this is an exception for hyphenating prefixes. If there's already a word of your new creation, you need to use a hyphen for clarification. So it would be re-create.
So what have you created today? Or better still, what are your plans to recreate this weekend? Doing anything fun?
When I was a little girl and in school, I could have sworn that my teachers presented grammar as set-in-stone rules. The way they showed me how to do something was the only way to do it. I graduated from high school and moved on to college, and no one ever said anything different.
Well, guess what? I moved into the business world and attended a training session that provided me with a "Duh!" moment.
Latin grammar never changes because Latin is a dead language. Dead? Yes. Because there's nowhere in the world where people actively speak it, so it never changes.
That doesn't work with English. English is a vibrant, ever-changing language. It's the official language in several countries, and each one manages to tweak it in their own way. For example, in 2007, the word Woot was the Merriam-Webster Dictionary word of the year. If you follow the link you'll see what it means. But do you know where it came from? We Owned the Other Team. It's a gaming term that's now being used by people who aren't gamers.
Snarky is another word I like. I heard it for the first time when I became a moderator at the Leaky Lounge. Many of the other moderators are British, and that's been mostly a British term, according to Dictionary.com. But I'm hearing it a lot now, both from people I associate with and on American television and in American books.
This is my first post in a weekly series on grammar (future posts should be shorter). From what I read in books, we writers seem to have a bit more discretion than people in the business world. For example, Jo Rowling uses comma splices all the time. What's a comma splice? It's when you use a comma to connect to standalone sentences. In business writing, it's considered poor grammar.
Ted grabbed the ball. He threw it at Bill.
Ted grabbed the ball, he threw it at Bill. (this is a comma splice.)
Grammatically correct options? You can connect the two sentences with the word "and".
Ted grabbed the ball, and he threw it at Bill.
If the sentences are closely related, you could use a semicolon.
Ted grabbed the ball; he threw it at Bill.
But Rowling's editors didn't find it necessary to edit out all her comma splices, so that implies to me that for writing books (not about grammar or for business), we may have some discretion. Who decides? My guess is your editor.
But everyone needs to know there are different styles of grammar. And the rules are different, depending upon the style you're using. When I teach classes on grammar, I suggest that my coworkers choose one style and be consistent. At work, we use the Gregg Reference Manual. This is business oriented, but it's still a good resource about grammar rules. They update every five years to keep up with trends. Click here if you'd like to see a list of other sources.
Notice in the following (hilarious) video the reference to the Chicago Manual of Style. They aren't talking fashion.
So where are your grammar strengths? How about your weaknesses? What resources do you prefer to use?
Happy News!
