My grammar bio refuses to die

Number of entries received for the 2008 InnermoonLit Award for Best First Chapter of a Novel to date: 15 - We're stuck again! I hope this isn't a technical problem but just a natural lull in submissions.

It was many years before I found myself standing in front of a class again, teaching Freshman Composition. Fortunately for me, Brian has taught various college-level writing classes and helped me tremendously, sharing all his lectures and giving me tons of advice, support, and both figurative and literal hand-holding. This experience forced me to finally take the time to learn the proper usage of commas. Brian shared his NAYFOBS mnemonic with me (the same idea as FANBOYS, but so much better. The sillier the mnemonic device, the easier it is to remember), and I was able to mark student papers and teach them the rules.

Finally getting back to the second part of that advice I mentioned last week...Am I saying that every writer should teach? No, although there’s no better motivation for learning something than teaching it to someone else. What I’m saying is that I think reading will only take you so far. You will pick up a lot of good practices, and reading hones your ear for language, but you will still have your grammar weak spots. (Mine were pretty common: comma splices and faulty parallelism. And I have a tendency to spell led l-e-a-d.)

Try to identify your weaknesses, then commit to fixing those bad habits. You could take a class or get some one-on-one tutoring, or you could buy an up-to-date writer’s handbook and teach yourself to correct your work.

I like the Prentice Hall Handbook. It’s well organized and the grammar lessons are easy to understand. You can get a used copy at Amazon for under a dollar (plus shipping, of course). If you live near a college or university, you might even be able to snag a free one. Our English department routinely puts dozens of instructor’s editions of textbooks out in the hall on their “free books” shelf. Professors get so many free copies from publishers hoping they’ll adopt their books, purging is an ongoing process. As long as you have a trusty reference manual of your own, you don’t have to memorize the rules but can refer back to it as often as needed.