In the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd add a little fun to the mix of writing and editing your work. Exhausted after a long bout of writing, I stopped for a brief rest. I knew I had to start to edit my writing a lot sooner than I like to. Usually I wait a day or two for articles, and a week or longer for books. This time, however, I was almost out of time.

As I started to watch a conference on video, the speaker used The Grinch Who Stole Christmas as an anecdote. As I paused to listen, my mind momentarily shifted gears and began to imagine how helpful it would be to have a Grammar Grinch on hand.

No longer focused on the speaker, I began to calculate how much more time I would have to write if, by chance, as I slept at night, a Grammar Grinch showed up and stole all my grammar faux pas from my day's writing. I'd awake and discover some holes in my previous days writing, and quickly see what needed to be fixed. No more long, tedious hours of combing my work for each grammar gremlin I repeatedly invite into my prose.

Short of a new technological wonder being developed to assist us, we all have to sweep through our writing time and time again. To help you with the process of editing and fine tuning your writing, I am going to list the major grammar areas you should be sure to investigate.

Check to be sure you are using the grammar items listed below correctly. I will detail each area in it's own article over the next few weeks. I hope this help you edit tighter and faster each time you do it.

Sentences: need both a subject and the predicate.
Clauses: independent clauses and subordinate clauses and how to break your sentences into clauses.
Phrases: what they are and how to use them.
Parts of speech: There are eight parts of speech. Noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection.

In separate articles I will cover the following:

Sentences, Clauses, Phrases
Parts of speech
Interjections
Conjunctions
Verbs: Verb Tense, Verb Mood, Verb Voice
Articles
Adjectives
Adverbs
Prepositions
Pronouns
Nouns and Plural forms of nouns

Stop by my forum and let me know where your biggest grammar issues are. Also, share any helpful tips you use to write better in your drafts.

Happy Editing : - )




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