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Description
Things That Everyone Should Know About Writing

Contents
Points of View
Tenses
Misused Words
Posessession
Formatting

Things you need to be aware of before reading:

    If you would like to quickly jump to a topic, press F3 on your keyboard and type in one of the preceding topics you wish to learn about.

I would like to point out that it IS possible for you to view this piece of writing with proper indenting. Just press the ¶ button in the top right corner then read away~

Points of View

Recently it has been brought to my attention that a good number of literary works that are lacking in basic skills and the fundamentals of writing.  I believe that everyone, regardless of (a reasonable) age and skill level, should at least be aware the topics we will cover. We will discuss different points and simple ways to improve your overall writing skills.

First we will discuss the different narratives that you may choose to write in: first person, second person, and third person.

Be aware that first person is traditionally not used in school papers and is meant to be more descriptive and personal.  First person is usually used for works of fiction and poetry. When reading first person it's like being inside the writers head. It makes it easier for the reader to relate to the narrator or author.

When writing in first person you will you usually use the pronouns 'I', 'we', 'us', and 'me'.

Example:

'Yesterday, as I was shopping for my party this Saturday I noticed a little boy holding onto his mother with one hand and a bright red balloon with the other. The little boy had a brilliant smile on his face as he looked up at his mother pleading for the box of cookies on the store shelf.'

Second person is a point of view you will not often see it in writing and can also be very difficult to write in consistently. I recommend that you avoid writing in second person. Second person is used most frequently in reader-inserts and 'how-to' books or articles.

If you do chose to write in second person you need to be aware that the pronoun you should be using is 'you'.

Example:
'You quickly gathered up your school books and grabbed your toasted bagel off the counter and hurried out the door in order to reach the bus stop in time. As you climbed on the bus you saw your friends Penny and Erick waving you to the back. You hurried through the crowded isle of backpacks and legs to the back of the bus.'

Third person is most commonly used in non-fiction and academic papers along with creative writing. It's like the narrator is telling each characters point of view.

When writing in third person you will use pronouns such as 'they,' 'it,', 'them', 'he,' and 'she'.

Example:

'Jeff looked around the vacant room. It looked like no one had been there for months. He walked over to the book shelf and ran a finger over the top of a picture frame that contained a photo of a little girl and her dog. Dust, lots of dust. Jeff wiped the dust from his fingers onto his dark trousers and moved his search to the window on the far wall of the room.'

Tenses

Remember to be consistent in your writing. Don't switch from one point of view to another.  Along with being aware of the point of view you are writing in you should also be consistent in the tense you're writing in whether it is past or present tense, or even further, although you will only see future tense used very rarely and typically only in short blurbs such as:

'She told me:
"Tomorrow, you are going to fall over. You will trip over a stone on the sidewalk, Your momentum will carry you into the street, and before you can get out of the way, a bus will hit you. In three days, you are going to wake up in a hospital on the other side of town, and you will have no memory of me, or this conversation."
Then she turned and walked way.'

Past tense:

It's already happened! It's over and done with. Most fictional works are written in this tense. It is significantly easier to write in than the present tense.

When writing in past tense you will use words such as 'walked',  'went', 'wrote', 'lived', 'was', and 'had'.

Example:

'Yesterday I had a horrible day. Just as I stepped out the door it began to rain. It wasn't a light rain but nearly a torrential downpour!  When I finally reached the convenience story they were all out of neon green nail polish. I walked up to a store worker to complain about their lack of green nail polish and unbeknownst to me.'

Present tense:

It's currently happening right now as you read. It can be very difficult to write in the present tense, but it can be very useful to keep the reader engaged in the writing. If you're looking to challenge yourself in your writing I recommend giving present tense a try. It will take some practice to master but you will be delighted once you have this difficult skill under your belt.

Example:

"The year-captain wonders whether everyone aboard, one by one, is about to undergo some maddening transformation for the worse. Already Noelle is losing the ability to communicate with her sister on Earth; the blunt and straightforward Sieglinde has unsettlingly chosen to challenge the reliability of the theorems that she herself helped to write; and now the easygoing and irreverent Heinz is tiresomely eager to explain the year-captain's own responsibilities to him. What next? What next, he wonders." - Robert Silverberg, Starborne

Now that you know about the tenses and the points of views used in writing now all you have to do is be consistent when using them. It is extremely confusing to a reader if you switch from present tense to past tense or vise versa. This is also true when it comes or the point of view. You may not notice that you have switched from your original tense or point of view but your readers will notice. You can prevent this from happening by rereading your writing before you submit or publish it.

Not only can the switching of tenses and the point of view be confusing to the reader but so can the incorrect use of common English words and phrases. Does it bother you that some people type 'your' when in the context of the writing it should be 'you're'? What about a lack of apostrophes in contractions? Have you ever wondered what 'per say' means? Or maybe you're just confused about when you would be using these words. Well it's alright, we'll cover all the previously mentioned and then some!

Misused Words

One of the biggest mistakes I've noticed in writing is the incorrect use of the words 'your' and 'you're'. The word 'you're' is a contraction for the words 'you are' where as 'your' shows possession. So for example the sentence, 'You're heading to the store when you notice that you have forgotten your shopping list;'  (Present tense, second person) This sentence shows the correct uses of both 'you're' and 'your'. To know for sure if you have the correct form of 'your/you're' in your writing is to replace 'you're' with 'you are'. So in my example sentence 'you're' can be replaced with 'you are' and the sentence will still make sense. If it doesn't make sense you will know that you should use 'your' instead. Keep in mind that 'your 'shows that YOU own something. The concept same goes for 'it's' and 'its'.

Another thing that I've noticed in writing that should not be happening is a lack of apostrophes in contractions. In the English language a contraction requires an apostrophe. 'Cant' needs to be 'can't', short for 'cannot'. 'Wouldnt' needs to be 'wouldn't' short for 'would not'. You get the idea. If you're typing in Microsoft Word or Open Office or any other document writer it should correct a lack of apostrophes. Right now Word is telling me that 'wouldnt' and 'cant' are spelled incorrectly. When rereading your writing you need to keep an eye out for those missing apostrophes.

POP QUIZ! Is it 'alot' or 'a lot'? Quick! Choose your answer! … Did you choose 'a lot'? I hope so because that is the correct spelling. 'A lot' has always been two words and will continue to be two words. Just remember that it takes 'a lot' more than one word to spell 'a lot'.

POP QUIZ! AGAIN!? Yes another pop quiz. Which pronoun is correct? 'Maddie and (I or me?) went to the store.' I hope you choose 'I'! That one was pretty easy wasn't it? Some aren't so easy like, 'She told Jim and (I or me?) to get firewood.' Not so easy, eh? Try reading the sentence like this: 'She told I to get firewood.'  Doesn't make very much sense does it? The sentence 'She told Jim and I to get fire wood' is actually incorrect. To know if you should use 'I' or 'me' take out the other noun along with the word 'and' to determine which makes sense.  Now it seems obvious that 'She told Jim and me to get firewood' is actually correct.

Now I'm not going to lecture you about possessives and adding 's' to words to make then possessive because I find it long winded and boring. It is something that you should most definitely already know and apply to your writing. I do not run into possession or plural errors very often so I do not feel the need to devote a section to this topic. If you are confused on this topic drop me a line and I will gladly answer your question.

There are many phrases and words that are incorrectly used in the English language. I cannot mention them all here since it is a very long list but I will point out one. I'm sure you've heard someone use the words 'per say' but did you know that 'per say' does not mean 'to say' or 'to say that'? The correct spelling of 'per say' is really 'per se' which is Latin and means 'in itself'. It is very rarely is ever used correctly in verbal speech or literature. I once found it incorrectly used in a published novel I had borrowed from my local library. It was correctly spelled (per se), but it was used incorrectly. If you would like to view a list of commonly misused words I highly recommend checking out www.squidoo.com/misused-words#… .

Possession
It can be hard to correctly show possession in writting; I know. I've never been all that good at it myself. First off, when you're showing possession you need to know what you're message you're trying to give your reader. (Reading is a conversation between the author and the reader.) Make sure you're not screwing up possession with contractions. We've already talked about contractions, and if you haven't noticed I use a lot of them. Contractions also have their place with nouns aswell. If I say, "Hank's going to be famous." The 's' after 'Hank' is a word. That word is 'is'. It this instance nothing belongs to Hank (except his future fame). Now most people know when to put an apostrophy s or s apostrophy, but here are two examples of each:
The lovers' letters.
Bill's pencil.

The next real big question is what you do if someone's name ends in 's'. If you have a friend named Jess and you want to say that you have her pencil you'd could simpily drop the additional 's' for 'I have Jess' pencil', or 'I have Jess's pencil', right? I bet you're thinking, 'No. That's not right. It's either one or the other!' Wrong! Both are correct, but dropping the final 's' and leaving it as 'Jess'' sounds more pleaseing. If you choose to have the 's' at the end it just sounds like you're a snake. Choose one or the other, they're both right, but just be consistant!

Once you know if you're showing possession or using a contraction you need to identify where you going to put your appostrophy. Jone's or Jones'. The each me something different, but what?

Formatting

Now that you know some of the things you need to watch out for when you're writing you need to know how to properly format your writing. Have you forgotten how to write a dialogue since fourth grade English class? Do you know when to use a comma or a semicolon or maybe how to use a colon? Maybe you don't now, but you don't have to worry, you will.

Have you ever come across a piece of writing that's just one big blob of words? I know I have on a good amount of occasions. If you have, you will know that the writing is very, very difficult to read. You continue to loose your spot as you read and it appears that there aren't any pauses in the writing for your brain to take a break and register what you're reading.

Not only do you need to separate your writing into paragraphs, but you also need to indent these paragraphs. I know that this can be difficult on some websites but you can work around it. Remember your space bar? Press it approximately fifteen times, depending on the settings on your computer more or less, at the beginning of a paragraph so your writing is properly formatted. These are things that you may not seem very important to you but a reader WILL notice when they are missing. When was the last time you read a published novel that was wasn't separated into paragraphs and the beginning of each of these paragraphs indented. People may stop reading you piece of writing if it becomes to difficult for them to read or understand. Use paragraphs and indenting properly and you are more likely to keep their attention.

A MAJOR thing that I have noticed that's on the line of formatting is incorrect format when writing dialogue. The best way for me to inform you about writing dialogue is for me to show you an example of correctly formatted dialogue.

'"It's really nice out today," said Jake, "it better not rain later!" Jake, being a pessimist, took his umbrella with him as he walked out the door.'

Notice that the beginning of this dialogue is indented. Also note the commas before and after the quotation marks. The final punctuation in the sentence will be INSIDE the quotation marks. In this case it's an exclamation mark.
Every time a new person starts talking, start a new paragraph.

'"That was really cool," Sarah exclaimed. She held open the door open for Josh as he walked inside with his very successful science experiment.
Josh laughed, "Thanks Sarah!" He grinned.'

Again, look very carefully at the punctuation used. When writing dialogue, remember: a new person means a new paragraph, you WILL need to use commas, and indent your dialogue.

Things you need to be aware of

There are a few things that are very important that I have and have not mentioned and I would like to just bring these to your attention for the next time you begin writing.

Write in complete sentences and watch out for run-on sentences!

Be sure you're showing possession properly.

Know how to make a word plural correctly.

Use paragraphs and indenting.

Be consistent in your writing!

Have fun while writing. It shouldn't be a chore it should be a fun skill that you enjoy do it correctly.

If you have any questions about the topics covered feel free to ask me in the comments or send me a note.  I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

If you believe that I have missed an important topic or point that you feel should have been covered add a comment telling me what you believe should be add or send me a note. Whichever you fancy.

Description
Things That Everyone Should Know About Writing

Contents
Points of View
Tenses
Misused Words
Posessession
Formatting

Things you need to be aware of before reading:

    If you would like to quickly jump to a topic, press F3 on your keyboard and type in one of the preceding topics you wish to learn about.

I would like to point out that it IS possible for you to view this piece of writing with proper indenting. Just press the ¶ button in the top right corner then read away~

Points of View

Recently it has been brought to my attention that a good number of literary works that are lacking in basic skills and the fundamentals of writing.  I believe that everyone, regardless of (a reasonable) age and skill level, should at least be aware the topics we will cover. We will discuss different points and simple ways to improve your overall writing skills.

First we will discuss the different narratives that you may choose to write in: first person, second person, and third person.

Be aware that first person is traditionally not used in school papers and is meant to be more descriptive and personal.  First person is usually used for works of fiction and poetry. When reading first person it's like being inside the writers head. It makes it easier for the reader to relate to the narrator or author.

When writing in first person you will you usually use the pronouns 'I', 'we', 'us', and 'me'.

Example:

'Yesterday, as I was shopping for my party this Saturday I noticed a little boy holding onto his mother with one hand and a bright red balloon with the other. The little boy had a brilliant smile on his face as he looked up at his mother pleading for the box of cookies on the store shelf.'

Second person is a point of view you will not often see it in writing and can also be very difficult to write in consistently. I recommend that you avoid writing in second person. Second person is used most frequently in reader-inserts and 'how-to' books or articles.

If you do chose to write in second person you need to be aware that the pronoun you should be using is 'you'.

Example:
'You quickly gathered up your school books and grabbed your toasted bagel off the counter and hurried out the door in order to reach the bus stop in time. As you climbed on the bus you saw your friends Penny and Erick waving you to the back. You hurried through the crowded isle of backpacks and legs to the back of the bus.'

Third person is most commonly used in non-fiction and academic papers along with creative writing. It's like the narrator is telling each characters point of view.

When writing in third person you will use pronouns such as 'they,' 'it,', 'them', 'he,' and 'she'.

Example:

'Jeff looked around the vacant room. It looked like no one had been there for months. He walked over to the book shelf and ran a finger over the top of a picture frame that contained a photo of a little girl and her dog. Dust, lots of dust. Jeff wiped the dust from his fingers onto his dark trousers and moved his search to the window on the far wall of the room.'

Tenses

Remember to be consistent in your writing. Don't switch from one point of view to another.  Along with being aware of the point of view you are writing in you should also be consistent in the tense you're writing in whether it is past or present tense, or even further, although you will only see future tense used very rarely and typically only in short blurbs such as:

'She told me:
"Tomorrow, you are going to fall over. You will trip over a stone on the sidewalk, Your momentum will carry you into the street, and before you can get out of the way, a bus will hit you. In three days, you are going to wake up in a hospital on the other side of town, and you will have no memory of me, or this conversation."
Then she turned and walked way.'

Past tense:

It's already happened! It's over and done with. Most fictional works are written in this tense. It is significantly easier to write in than the present tense.

When writing in past tense you will use words such as 'walked',  'went', 'wrote', 'lived', 'was', and 'had'.

Example:

'Yesterday I had a horrible day. Just as I stepped out the door it began to rain. It wasn't a light rain but nearly a torrential downpour!  When I finally reached the convenience story they were all out of neon green nail polish. I walked up to a store worker to complain about their lack of green nail polish and unbeknownst to me.'

Present tense:

It's currently happening right now as you read. It can be very difficult to write in the present tense, but it can be very useful to keep the reader engaged in the writing. If you're looking to challenge yourself in your writing I recommend giving present tense a try. It will take some practice to master but you will be delighted once you have this difficult skill under your belt.

Example:

"The year-captain wonders whether everyone aboard, one by one, is about to undergo some maddening transformation for the worse. Already Noelle is losing the ability to communicate with her sister on Earth; the blunt and straightforward Sieglinde has unsettlingly chosen to challenge the reliability of the theorems that she herself helped to write; and now the easygoing and irreverent Heinz is tiresomely eager to explain the year-captain's own responsibilities to him. What next? What next, he wonders." - Robert Silverberg, Starborne

Now that you know about the tenses and the points of views used in writing now all you have to do is be consistent when using them. It is extremely confusing to a reader if you switch from present tense to past tense or vise versa. This is also true when it comes or the point of view. You may not notice that you have switched from your original tense or point of view but your readers will notice. You can prevent this from happening by rereading your writing before you submit or publish it.

Not only can the switching of tenses and the point of view be confusing to the reader but so can the incorrect use of common English words and phrases. Does it bother you that some people type 'your' when in the context of the writing it should be 'you're'? What about a lack of apostrophes in contractions? Have you ever wondered what 'per say' means? Or maybe you're just confused about when you would be using these words. Well it's alright, we'll cover all the previously mentioned and then some!

Misused Words

One of the biggest mistakes I've noticed in writing is the incorrect use of the words 'your' and 'you're'. The word 'you're' is a contraction for the words 'you are' where as 'your' shows possession. So for example the sentence, 'You're heading to the store when you notice that you have forgotten your shopping list;'  (Present tense, second person) This sentence shows the correct uses of both 'you're' and 'your'. To know for sure if you have the correct form of 'your/you're' in your writing is to replace 'you're' with 'you are'. So in my example sentence 'you're' can be replaced with 'you are' and the sentence will still make sense. If it doesn't make sense you will know that you should use 'your' instead. Keep in mind that 'your 'shows that YOU own something. The concept same goes for 'it's' and 'its'.

Another thing that I've noticed in writing that should not be happening is a lack of apostrophes in contractions. In the English language a contraction requires an apostrophe. 'Cant' needs to be 'can't', short for 'cannot'. 'Wouldnt' needs to be 'wouldn't' short for 'would not'. You get the idea. If you're typing in Microsoft Word or Open Office or any other document writer it should correct a lack of apostrophes. Right now Word is telling me that 'wouldnt' and 'cant' are spelled incorrectly. When rereading your writing you need to keep an eye out for those missing apostrophes.

POP QUIZ! Is it 'alot' or 'a lot'? Quick! Choose your answer! … Did you choose 'a lot'? I hope so because that is the correct spelling. 'A lot' has always been two words and will continue to be two words. Just remember that it takes 'a lot' more than one word to spell 'a lot'.

POP QUIZ! AGAIN!? Yes another pop quiz. Which pronoun is correct? 'Maddie and (I or me?) went to the store.' I hope you choose 'I'! That one was pretty easy wasn't it? Some aren't so easy like, 'She told Jim and (I or me?) to get firewood.' Not so easy, eh? Try reading the sentence like this: 'She told I to get firewood.'  Doesn't make very much sense does it? The sentence 'She told Jim and I to get fire wood' is actually incorrect. To know if you should use 'I' or 'me' take out the other noun along with the word 'and' to determine which makes sense.  Now it seems obvious that 'She told Jim and me to get firewood' is actually correct.

Now I'm not going to lecture you about possessives and adding 's' to words to make then possessive because I find it long winded and boring. It is something that you should most definitely already know and apply to your writing. I do not run into possession or plural errors very often so I do not feel the need to devote a section to this topic. If you are confused on this topic drop me a line and I will gladly answer your question.

There are many phrases and words that are incorrectly used in the English language. I cannot mention them all here since it is a very long list but I will point out one. I'm sure you've heard someone use the words 'per say' but did you know that 'per say' does not mean 'to say' or 'to say that'? The correct spelling of 'per say' is really 'per se' which is Latin and means 'in itself'. It is very rarely is ever used correctly in verbal speech or literature. I once found it incorrectly used in a published novel I had borrowed from my local library. It was correctly spelled (per se), but it was used incorrectly. If you would like to view a list of commonly misused words I highly recommend checking out www.squidoo.com/misused-words#… .

Possession
It can be hard to correctly show possession in writting; I know. I've never been all that good at it myself. First off, when you're showing possession you need to know what you're message you're trying to give your reader. (Reading is a conversation between the author and the reader.) Make sure you're not screwing up possession with contractions. We've already talked about contractions, and if you haven't noticed I use a lot of them. Contractions also have their place with nouns aswell. If I say, "Hank's going to be famous." The 's' after 'Hank' is a word. That word is 'is'. It this instance nothing belongs to Hank (except his future fame). Now most people know when to put an apostrophy s or s apostrophy, but here are two examples of each:
The lovers' letters.
Bill's pencil.

The next real big question is what you do if someone's name ends in 's'. If you have a friend named Jess and you want to say that you have her pencil you'd could simpily drop the additional 's' for 'I have Jess' pencil', or 'I have Jess's pencil', right? I bet you're thinking, 'No. That's not right. It's either one or the other!' Wrong! Both are correct, but dropping the final 's' and leaving it as 'Jess'' sounds more pleaseing. If you choose to have the 's' at the end it just sounds like you're a snake. Choose one or the other, they're both right, but just be consistant!

Once you know if you're showing possession or using a contraction you need to identify where you going to put your appostrophy. Jone's or Jones'. The each me something different, but what?

Formatting

Now that you know some of the things you need to watch out for when you're writing you need to know how to properly format your writing. Have you forgotten how to write a dialogue since fourth grade English class? Do you know when to use a comma or a semicolon or maybe how to use a colon? Maybe you don't now, but you don't have to worry, you will.

Have you ever come across a piece of writing that's just one big blob of words? I know I have on a good amount of occasions. If you have, you will know that the writing is very, very difficult to read. You continue to loose your spot as you read and it appears that there aren't any pauses in the writing for your brain to take a break and register what you're reading.

Not only do you need to separate your writing into paragraphs, but you also need to indent these paragraphs. I know that this can be difficult on some websites but you can work around it. Remember your space bar? Press it approximately fifteen times, depending on the settings on your computer more or less, at the beginning of a paragraph so your writing is properly formatted. These are things that you may not seem very important to you but a reader WILL notice when they are missing. When was the last time you read a published novel that was wasn't separated into paragraphs and the beginning of each of these paragraphs indented. People may stop reading you piece of writing if it becomes to difficult for them to read or understand. Use paragraphs and indenting properly and you are more likely to keep their attention.

A MAJOR thing that I have noticed that's on the line of formatting is incorrect format when writing dialogue. The best way for me to inform you about writing dialogue is for me to show you an example of correctly formatted dialogue.

'"It's really nice out today," said Jake, "it better not rain later!" Jake, being a pessimist, took his umbrella with him as he walked out the door.'

Notice that the beginning of this dialogue is indented. Also note the commas before and after the quotation marks. The final punctuation in the sentence will be INSIDE the quotation marks. In this case it's an exclamation mark.
Every time a new person starts talking, start a new paragraph.

'"That was really cool," Sarah exclaimed. She held open the door open for Josh as he walked inside with his very successful science experiment.
Josh laughed, "Thanks Sarah!" He grinned.'

Again, look very carefully at the punctuation used. When writing dialogue, remember: a new person means a new paragraph, you WILL need to use commas, and indent your dialogue.

Things you need to be aware of

There are a few things that are very important that I have and have not mentioned and I would like to just bring these to your attention for the next time you begin writing.

Write in complete sentences and watch out for run-on sentences!

Be sure you're showing possession properly.

Know how to make a word plural correctly.

Use paragraphs and indenting.

Be consistent in your writing!

Have fun while writing. It shouldn't be a chore it should be a fun skill that you enjoy do it correctly.

If you have any questions about the topics covered feel free to ask me in the comments or send me a note.  I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

If you believe that I have missed an important topic or point that you feel should have been covered add a comment telling me what you believe should be add or send me a note. Whichever you fancy.