Tag Archives: writing

To Oxford Comma or Not?

Before one can make the decision about whether they should use an Oxford comma or not, one must first understand what the Oxford comma is.

Consider a list with at least three different items: apples, oranges and bananas. If one was to use an Oxford comma, then the list would look like apples, oranges, and bananas. Notice the use of the comma before the and. However, you won’t always find a comma before the and. If the list has only two items, that list of apples and oranges wouldn’t use a comma.

Confusing, right?Read More→

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: The “Was” Edit

When editing a manuscript, one should always be looking at ways to tighten the writing and language used. There are many tricks that one can employ. Here is one that I often pull out of my hat when editing.

The "Was" Edit

This editing technique is incredibly simple: search for every instance of is/are/was/were and ask yourself if can you reword that sentence to removed that instance of was-type words.

Read More→

Give me the Em-Dash

Many writers encounter special characters within writing and either don't know how to use them or how to get their word processor system to render them properly. Yes, you can go "insert character", however, for characters such as an ellipse and em-dashes, most word processors auto-replace.

Read More→

Young Adult: A Category or a Genre?

Whenever someone tells me they write young adult, my first response is always, "That's nice. So what genre do you write?" More often than not, I get a blank stare in response. The look in their eyes says it all.

"I just told you. I write young adult."

At this point, I normally chuckle. "So you write fantasy." I tend to make this conclusion because most of those I meet who have made this young adult classification mistake do write fantasy of some flavour or another.

However, sometimes I'll get that affronted look. "No. I write young adult." To this, I bow my head in shame.

The confusion between genre and category is something that plagues every new writer. We're told that we have to categorise this piece of work that we have spent months, if not years, working on, but we don't want to fit into a box — we want to be in a circle. So… the question is, what does young adult really mean?

Read More→