We are pleased to announce Grammbo, the Grammar Guru will be returning to the Bookshelf Muse to answer more grammar-related questions. For those who are new to the Muse, Grammbo is a successful editor who does manuscript evaluation, style, and substantive editorial work, in addition to being a published author herself.
Like last time, please direct your grammatical questions in the comments of this post, and please idicate the market for which the work is intended. Grammbo is versed in Canadian, UK and American markets, and not all rules are the same for all countries.
If you would like to check out the first addition of Grammbo’s grammar answers first to make sure your query has not already been answered, you can check here. When enough questions have been asked, we will close the question period and post the answers as soon as possible.
So, do you have a question about grammar, or need clarification on the application of a rule? Please let us know!
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
I did Angela–thank you and your fellow Marbles for such a great answer. I know that I’m not the only one looking for info on the tween market, so hopefully others will find the great nuggets of info you provided.
Hey, did you see the answer to your tween question on The Write Marbles blog?
And for grammer…. here’s one for you….
Why must there be more than one style manual….can’t the people in Chicago get together with the psychologist… or all the shrinks can go to Chicago and work out their differences of opinion???
Just and idea…
I always get confused in situations where a person is quoting another person, like so:
I groaned at the sight of Mom chatting up my friends across the room. “Nice move, brainiac,” I whispered to Becca. “You just had to tell her, ‘Sure, parents can come too’.”
I always forget if it’s .'” or ‘.” *screams*
And is it different if it’s a comma?
,'” I said. or ‘,” I said.
*screams again*
Can you go over its/it’s? I’m always messing these ones up.
this one always gets me for some reason…if you have dialogue that breaks with a tag in the middle separated by commas (ex: “Yes,” she said, “I’m going to the store.”), does the second bit of dialogue begin with a capital letter? Obviously in the example it does, but if it was something other than “I”?
I’m wondering how in the heck to use the three dots (I have no idea what that’s called)…
If I’m writing a list and want to say this, that, the other thing, etc… And then if I want to continue the sentence, what do I do about spacing? And capital letters on the second part? Can you put the dots in the middle of a sentence or would they always go at the end?
Hi
I’d like to know what you think about semi colons in dialogue. There’s lots of dialogue I write where it seems natural to use a semi colon, but my crit partners tell me that is frowned upon in published fiction. Is it, stylistically, I mean?
My target is the US and Canada, so I’d like to know for both if possible, if there’s a difference.