Ain't got good grammar? Top 5 grammatical tips.

“Will editors overlook my grammatical errors?”

This is one of the most common questions I hear from my students at the Sydney Writers' Centre.

Let me ask a question in return. Would you overlook your accountant’s inability to count? Your doctor listening for a heartbeat on the right side of your chest? Your builder wearing a tu-tu?

Thought not.

Good sentence structure is as important to a writer as an electric eel and a nose plug is to a plumber.

So, no, an editor won’t overlook grammatical errors. Those little slip-ups - peppered throughout your work - will reek of inexperience, expose a lack of knowledge and hint at laziness.

Grammar hasn’t always been taught well in Australian schools (or at all, some generation Xs and Ys would argue), but that is no excuse for fumbling your way through your written work.

I have picked five common errors that pop up in student assignments and have devised a little swot session to help you finesse your words so that you can become the Julie Goodwin of MasterWriter.

1. Complex sentences that are just too complex.
When wandering through the vegetable and herb garden in the yard of her Sydney home, Melissa, who is used to the outdoors because she was raised on a farm in far northern Queensland during her formative years after her father divorced her mother, takes the time to relax and forget about the pressures of her job as the most senior female lawyer at the country’s biggest legal firm.

Sure, it is a good idea to accessorise your writing with a mix of simple, compound and complex sentences, but avoid your complex sentences becoming just too darn complex.

Long-winded and confusing, complex sentences may need to be re-read a few times by readers so that they can make sense of them. Frustrated, their eyes may then wander and they’ll soon start scoping for prettier, younger, smarter stories.

Read each sentence out loud and if it sounds as if you are cramming too much in there, you probably are. Break it up into two or three sharper, more concise sentences.

2. Tautologies are unnecessary repetition that are... unnecessary.
After a long discussion, the final conclusion was that we join together so that if we fell down the cliff we would not fall alone.

When are conclusions not final? If you join, aren’t you automatically together? Never heard of anyone falling up.

You get my drift. According to my 2223-page, 2.8kg Macquarie Dictionary (my second favourite book behind my equally impressive Macquarie Thesaurus), a tautology is the unnecessary repetition of an idea.

If it is unnecessary, then it makes sense not to use it.

3. The experts are always telling us to be more active.
This sentence was written by me as I sat, sedentary as Norm, on my couch[1]. However, I wrote this sentence after I decided it was time to get more active[2].

When we use an active voice, 'I' (in example 2) undertake the action. When using a passive voice, the 'sentence'(in example 1) receives the action of the verb.

Active voice is more commonly used than passive voice, and is preferable to readers because it's more lively and concise. Overuse of the passive voice can make our writing flat and uninteresting.

4. (Penned in by parentheses)
When Melissa (class of 94) decided to go to the UK in her gap year before starting university (to enjoy the rite of passage taken by many young Australians) she decided she didn’t mind what work (paid or voluntary) she took (secretary, cleaner, barmaid).

The brackets, or parentheses for the swottiest of swots, listed above are actually correct, but there are just too freaking many of them.

It is quite common for new writers to try to explain away many relevant points in brackets. By all means, use brackets when necessary, but don’t overdo it. Instead, give each valid point that you are making a little room to breathe, develop independence and grow into an adult-sized clause.

FYI, brackets are used to enclose qualifying or explanatory phrases or words that are important to the main clause. You can also use them to add examples, afterthoughts or conjecture.

5. Cull the capital.
Melissa, a Mother of three teenage Children, found parenting was getting harder and harder. Suddenly, she had to deal with Girlfriends and Boyfriends and requests of mixed gender sleepovers instead of toddler tantrums and grazed knees.

Capped common nouns slip into many students' assignments, like the expletives that slip into a butcher's lingo.

Common nouns (castles, wizard’s hat, wand, strange children) don’t need a capital letter, whereas titles (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) and proper nouns (Harry, Professor McGonagall) and place names (Privet Drive) do.

So, cull the capital where it isn't needed.

Okay, there you have it. My top 5 grammatical tips to you. These explanations are not exhaustive, nor are the only grammar points you should brush up on, but they are a start.

So, what are you waiting for? Get writing.


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