If you were raised among college graduates who only spoke grammatically correct English at home, you have an advantage above the majority of us, who grew up speaking local slang....

Sometimes we want a comma before the subordinate conjunction because, and at other times, we don’t. If we're not careful, the presence or absence of a comma can result in...

Instructors sometimes tell us that without conflict, we have no story. While that’s true, it’s important to understand why. A sword fight has plenty of action and conflict, but it...

OK is an abbreviation. Years ago, the proper spelling was O.K., but we’re now so much in love with acronyms that we’ve dropped the periods from many abbreviations, including this...

“Truth is stranger than fiction.” This quote has been attributed to many great writers, so it might be good to stop and consider what this means. With fiction we can...

Some writers tell their stories with mostly narrative. Others tell their stories with mostly dialogue. Neither approach is sufficient to show the picture and give readers the experience of being...

Writing instructors often stress the importance of reading the genre you want to write. The more you read, the more you’ll absorb the approach and style that will make you...

Most stories are best written in past tense. Paradoxically, with past tense, readers have a present sense of what has happened and comfortably move forward with what happens next. In...

Am I my brother’s keeper? Maybe not, but we are responsible for our words. Jesus said, “You can be sure, on Judgment Day, people will have to account for every...

An opening phrase introduces something important about the rest of the sentence, or it wouldn’t be there. We need to be sure it fulfills the purpose for which it was...