▼

Saturday, October 1, 2011

More Periods, Less Conjunctions?

Although this writing coach doesn't specialize in writing fiction, Ann Wylie's advice frequently makes me sit up and take notice. I also love some of the less well-known quotes she digs up. Like this one, from one of the many writing books next to my desk:

“There’s not much to be said about the period, except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.”
William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well

If you write for business, you may already know about her writing newsletter, but this one caught my attention. Click here to read what she says about Shorter Sentences.
(You may need to scroll around a bit, but her site is worth it.)

Now, excuse me while I depart the blog. I believe I have some conjunctions to "search and destroy."

Click here for my older post about Ann Wylie's newsletter, with a link to another website where I just wasted quite a few precious minutes. But totally fun minutes.
at

4 comments:

  1. MoeOctober 3, 2011 at 7:54 AM

    National Punctuation Day was a week or so ago. We sometimes need shorter sentences with fewer conjunctions, but when we opt for compound sentences, we need to punctuate them correctly. On my very first day of college, my English prof said, "If you commit a comma fault in a paper, you will fail the paper." We learned to be very careful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. PragmaticMomOctober 25, 2011 at 1:22 PM

    I can always use a reminder to use the period more often. It's so easy to keep typing without stopping to break up the sentence.

    Thanks for the reminder! I will try to heed!

    ReplyDelete
  3. HynesMomNovember 9, 2011 at 9:52 AM

    Shouldn't the headline be:

    More Periods, FEWER Conjunctions?

    (Sorry, this is one of my pet peeves.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Augusta ScattergoodNovember 9, 2011 at 10:03 AM

    Yes, HynesMom! You are quite right. And in fact, several of my Grammar Queen Facebook friends have already pointed that out. I think "we" (both the original article and I) were going for catchy headline grammar. Not the real stuff.
    ;)

    And Pragmatic Mom, my critique group just had a big discussion of the Comma Splice, so I know what you mean. Yikes, Moe, your prof must have had his students proofing very carefully.

    Thanks for commenting.
    Augusta

    ReplyDelete

Here's where you let me know what you think.