Tuesday, April 19, 2011

PUNCTUATION PROBLEMS

Do not worry, I will not be giving any grammar lessons, but what I will do is tell you of a few punctuation mistakes I have been making just in case there is someone out there doing the same thing.

I have had my novel edited by someone who is very technical about grammar and well, I made a few very stupid mistakes and I am sort of ashamed to share them, but here goes.

I now know that I should open Dialogue with “(66) and close dialogue with” (99). I Thought any quotation marks would do, which is not true.

I have also been putting a normal hyphen at the end of an interrupted sentence, which is also not correct. The proper symbol is achieved my pressing Alt 0151 (—). “What do you mean—”

Another thing that I am guilty of is putting my full stops and comas outside the quotation marks such as this “I am so hungry”. Instead of writing it like this “I am so hungry.” To me it was so insignificant but I suppose to the trained eye of a literary agent or editors it just screams amateur.

It might all be little things but in the end it creates the wrong impression and I am now working hard to fix it.

Not quite myself

I have no idea why, but I have not been feeling like myself. Even being in my own skin feels alien.  The good news is that I still managed t...