Writing is sometimes a lonely endeavor, but worth pursuit. If you want to write, I wish you luck and hope that you have the support of an editor or a beta reader or BOTH. When you write, you know the words because they are in your heart, in your head, part of your conscious and unconscious...but not always at the end of your fingertips. Yes, it's the fingertips and the brain who betray the Muse - the error is in the word processor which can't read your thoughts...yet. But we'll give that one a couple of years.

To that end, here are some helpful rules that a dear friend so often reminded me to keep in mind...

Simple Grammar Rules

1. Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use, and omit it when its not necessary.
2. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of ten or more words, to their antecedents.
3. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
4. Hyphenate only between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
5. A writer must not shift your point of view.
6. Fragments of sentences.
7. Be watchful of run-on sentences if you aren't careful they can become cumbersome and your readers will be confused your meaning may be lost.
8. Punctuation; is, important (to) clarify?
9. Remember to never split infinitives.
10. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

For Reference, try Yahoo! Dictionaries and its infinite resources in Yahoo! Reference:Libraries, and of course, Yahoo! Art:Humanities:Literature. I'll be posting other places to explore soon!

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