Use Action Beats with Dialogue
An action beat is a sentence that follows a line of dialogue, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The speaking character does something before or after their line of dialogue.
5 Ways to Edit a Comma Splice
Comma splices sound much trickier than they are. Basically, if you’ve written a common splice, you’ve tried to connect, or splice, two independent sentences with a comma in an incorrect way.
Numbers in Books
The “rules” about how to style numbers still trip up veteran writers (and editors). There are a lot of rules, and numbers is one of the topics that style guides often have very different ways of handling, which adds to the confusion.
In the US book-publishing world, we use the Chicago Manual of Style to determine how to treat numbers in text, whether fiction or nonfiction.
Optional Commas
Commas seem to be one of the greatest stressors for writers, including my clients. It makes sense–the comma is the most versatile punctuation mark and is used in so many different ways.
Adding to the confusion: there are instances where you–yes, you the author–get to decide whether or not to include a comma.
Cumulative Adjectives vs. Coordinating Adjectives
Where does the comma go?
Royal Order of Adjectives
I don’t know why this rule gets the regal treatment.
Ellipses aka Drama Dots
I recently heard someone call ellipses drama dots, and now I want to rename them. Drama dots sounds much more intriguing.
The Very Sweary Dictionary
I know many writers are swearbears. Nothing can make a writer cuss louder than an unexpected Word update just when they’ve hit a writing groove and all the words are flowing easily.
Punctuation Pizzazz with the Em-Dash
The em-dash is one of my favorite punctuation marks. No worries if you have no idea what an em-dash is. I didn’t either until I became an editor. Well, I knew what it was, I just didn’t know its name.