From the Disgruntled Editor: 3 Grammatical Errors in Your Blogs You Should Be Avoiding

Get out your red pens, people, because here comes a very disgruntled teacher!

I admit, writing can be tough work.  You do your research, brainstorm, and maybe even make an outline before typing up your blog, essay, book, or whatever.  The thing is even after all that planning, your first type up is going to have errors.  And guess who notices them?  Me!  Me and all the other keeners surfing the Internet who pay attention to detail.  There’s nothing worse than reading a blog with fabulous content and running into all sorts of mistakes.

No matter how good the content, unless you fix up the mechanics, I’m going to be less inclined to read the rest of your post.  I might even close out of it.  Why?  Because proper writing mechanics creates authenticity.

There is No Future Tense!

This blog entry is brought to you by 'pluperfect'.  'Pluperfect':  the blooper of past perfect storytelling.  (Seriously, I hate that word.  It sounds like a blooper in the English lexicon that should be excluded from the dictionary.)

I follow a writing blog that discusses several factors in creative writing.  Among these topics is tense and how it is used in narrative.  Overall, the blog was a great read, but there was one thing that sent shivers of discontent down my spine, and it was in this one sentence:  "There are three basic tenses in English:  future, present and past."  Several grammarians, as well as linguists, would argue that there is something wrong with this proposition.  I used to think it was true.  However, I soon discovered its flawed logic thanks to my English grammar professor at university: