It’s Wednesday (at least where I am), so it means it’s time for me to write about … something.
As you know, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. In terms of drawing (seriously) and writing, this is true.
The problem is I hate having to go back and proofread my work. And grammar and spellcheckers will only catch so much. (I do go back and check closely when working professionally, but it takes some time.)
Anyway, I have been looking at the way I make titles and use ellipses (…).
Did you know that words like “About” should be capitalized? I always thought that they shouldn’t since the word “About” is a preposition. Well, as I found out, I was doing it wrong.
Prepositions should be in lowercase, but only if they have 4 letters or less. If the word has 5 letters or more, it should be capitalized. There are other rules with prepositions, depending on how they are used in a sentence.
I was also wrong about ellipses. Generally, there should be a space on either side of one. Also, they are rarely needed at the beginning of a sentence, even if you are quoting mid-sentence. I work in Word most of the time, but I never caught this.
There are of course other aspects of typing that I need to review, like the use of em dashes (—), en dashes (–), and hyphens (-).
What makes this fun (for me, at least) is that it helps me to become a better writer. I am also overseeing the creation of a grammar guide. It’s always fun to apply what I know and learn to something that can help others. And the person working on the guide quite enjoys it, too.
Shmaltz and Menudo 
I love writing but despise grammar – passionately. I probably wrote the last sentence incorrectly haha.
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Thanks for dropping by. 🙂
I kinda love grammar now. Believe it or not, I hated it as a student in elementary school. By the time I reached the seventh grade, I realized that I had a basic understanding of it. Of course, I’m still learning because, face it: English is such a hard language. But it’s fun for me to learn new things about it and use what I’ve learned to improve my own posts, etc.
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I’m flashing back to my freshman year of college where we received a copy of English Simplified, which was a style guide. I have broken every rule in it by now, I imagine, but it served me well back in the day. I like reading about what I should be doing, even though I’m doing most of it wrong. Does that make me a rebel? Just sloppy and inattentive?? 🙂 Yep. I thought so!
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Well, when you write for yourself or an informal audience, sometimes it helps not to hamper yourself with the rules. As long as you say what you have to say and your readers get something good out of your posts, the posts have served their purpose.
I’m just a stickler for the rules when it comes to my own posts. But yes, it is fun to learn what I should be doing sometimes. It is also fun to learn about the etymology of words and their usage.
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Grammar comes easier for me when I read out loud more work. Never knew longer prepositions should be capitalized.
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Neither did I until I looked it up. I believe I was told differently before. Did the rules change?
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