Tips & Tricks

Semicolons: The Sad Demise of a Punctuation Mark

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Originally used by the Greeks as a question mark, the modern semicolon had its birth with the Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius in the 15th Century. He used it [...]

Writing advice from my seventh grade teacher — Sister John Rose

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Monocle pointed out the un-necessity of the word “very.” He’s absolutely right, and I meant to add that in. Sr. Rose was a quite strict when it came to English, [...]

Really, Finally, Actually — you don’t need them

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

I have found that these three words can be the bane of  a story. In fact, when I do my editing, I do a search and replace to get rid [...]

Killing Adverbs – Remittance Girl

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Someone, I can’t remember who, once said that no one ever has a right to use an adverb. In fact, lots of writing teachers will tell you that, if you’ve [...]

Writing Dialogue – Remittance Girl

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Firstly I’d like to fess up – I’m a lousy plot writer and you’ll never see a post here written by me about how to craft a good plot. But [...]