I need help with writing and grammar.

[Tennesseer]

Strunk and White's, The Elements of Style is classic.

Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss for help with punctuation.

[mmhmm]

THIS SITE has a free component that might be what you're looking for.

[Cookies Galore]

www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038

www.amazon.com/Elephants-Style-Trunkload-Contemporary-American/dp/0071422684/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405380379&sr=1-1&keywords=elephants+of+style

www.amazon.com/Woe-Grammarphobes-Better-English-Edition/dp/157322331X/ref=pd_cp_b_2

(Not completely relevant but one of my favorite books on language): www.amazon.com/Expletive-Deleted-Good-Look-Language/dp/0743274342/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405380772&sr=1-1&keywords=expletive+deleted


Grammar is fun!

[Knee Deep in Water Chloe]

So, here's where I don't want to come off as pompous. Please know I'm trying to sincerely help. Grammar is a small part of writing. Do you want to be able to teach your boys to write or are you just trying to understand the rules of the English language?

I'm totally fine with whatever you need, I just don't want to overwhelm or annoy you. 
I can PM you lots of stuff if you want. 

<very enthusiastic English teacher waits "patiently" with her hand up to be called on>

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

"The Writer's Options: Lessons in Style and Arrangement" is also a good tool for learning to compose/construct sentences, proper grammar, punctuation, etc etc.

Other book suggestions also included in this link:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/032107226X/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/

[mmhmm]

Getting the basics of grammar and punctuation is crucial, IMO. Once you feel confident with those you can move on to learning more about the different styles of writing. There's a lot to learn but I, too, consider it fun.

[dannylion]

Read books by people who had a masterful command of the English language: Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, Truman Capote, E.M. Forster, P. G. Wodehouse, and the like (those are just a few that come to mind at the moment).  Proper usage is as much internalizing patterns as it is learning rules.  The more exposure you have to good writing, the better your own command of the language will become. 

[billisonboard]

Thought I remembered this: 

Jul 10, 2014 12:57:29 GMT -5 @wrongsideof30 said:

... A lot of the students that come to the community college that I work at ...

Maybe you could take a class at the community college.

[billisonboard]

Jul 14, 2014 19:17:33 GMT -5 @wrongsideof30 said:

Jul 14, 2014 19:13:16 GMT -5 billisonboard said:

Thought I remembered this: Maybe you could take a class at the community college.

I did and got a 4.0 in both classes. Didn't help. 

That is just sad.

[giramomma]

I like this site: www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl when I have quick questions.

Also, I just looked on Coursera, and here's one MOOC
www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting

Here's a link to all the open writing courses at MIT
ocw.mit.edu/courses/#writing-and-humanistic-studies

In my writing class, we had to read the Wall Street Journal daily.



 

[Deleted]

Purdue's OWL (Online Writing Lab) has a lot of help. It is where I send some of my students.

[Deleted]

What exactly do you want to write? There has been good general info here. If we know wht you want to write it might provide more directed info.

[billisonboard]

Jul 14, 2014 19:26:29 GMT -5 @wrongsideof30 said:

Jul 14, 2014 19:21:38 GMT -5 billisonboard said:

That is just sad.

It would be sad if I called that good enough. At least I'm still trying to improve myself. 

You did perfect work in a community college class and you are thinking that you will learn skills you currently do not possess when your children take classes at some unclear level of their education. That says something sad about the education offered by the community college at which you work.

[Deleted]

Do you ever struggle for the right words? Maybe you want to do vocabulary? 

[Deleted]

I guess I never felt grammar was holding me back there. Generally, if you pause you add a comma. In most general writing it doesn't need to get much more complex than that... 

If this is in business correspondence, you might want to look for a technical writing manual. Otherwise I think the books listed are good for general grammar.

[Lizard Queen]

I've found that reading things online has really hurt my writing skills. (Present company excluded, of course!) When there are glaring mistakes on news websites, you know there is a problem. And don't get me started on the comments. Rediculous, loose instead of lose, boarders instead of borders, and then add some crazy auto-corrects to the mix. I feel like I'm forgetting a lot just by being exposed to so much crap.

[Deleted]

Wrongside . . . #1 rule for commas is "When in doubt, leave it out." I wish I had thought that up, but I didn't. People tend to overuse commas in general.

What you are talking about when you say, "I want you to read it and hear it like I am saying it" is that you want your writing to have voice. That is the most difficult concept to teach in writing.

The best way to learn to write better is simply to write a lot. Do you keep a blog or online journal? It really will help.

[Deleted]

Jul 14, 2014 20:59:34 GMT -5 oped said:

I guess I never felt grammar was holding me back there. Generally, if you pause you add a comma. In most general writing it doesn't need to get much more complex than that... 

No, no.  You don't punctuate like that. If you don't know why you need a comma, just don't put one. Honestly, it interrupts the flow less to have fewer commas than to have too many because you are out-of-breath.

[Deleted]

I do agree with you it's overused, but seriously most writing doesn't require significant grammar, don't you think?   In fact, I'd think its more likely sentences are running on or phrases misplaced, if serious grammar intervention is needed in general writing.

[msventoux]

Jul 14, 2014 21:09:09 GMT -5 Lizard Queen said:

I've found that reading things online has really hurt my writing skills. (Present company excluded, of course!) When there are glaring mistakes on news websites, you know there is a problem. And don't get me started on the comments. Rediculous, loose instead of lose, boarders instead of borders, and then add some crazy auto-corrects to the mix. I feel like I'm forgetting a lot just by being exposed to so much crap.

Before I spent so much time online I could spell and use most words correctly, without a second thought.  Now I have to carefully monitor myself to make sure I'm correctly using they're/their/there or loose/lose, among others.  Online access has expanded my knowledge in so many ways, but set me back in a few ways as well. 

[mmhmm]

Even people who know better take freedoms with writing when it's not something critical. Punctuation has changed a great deal since I learned, many moons ago, and I still tend to cling to the old ways. Even in grammar, I cling to the old ways. Drives me nuts to see sentences ended with prepositions, but it's almost acceptable today. We old codgers just don't take to change well.

[Deleted]

Jul 14, 2014 21:16:31 GMT -5 oped said:

I do agree with you it's overused, but seriously most writing doesn't require significant grammar, don't you think?   In fact, I'd think its more likely sentences are running on or phrases misplaced, if serious grammar intervention is needed in general writing.

The majority of us are Native Speakers so you are right: most of us don't require significant grammar instruction.  The most significant comma problem is the comma splice (joining two sentences with a comma instead of a semi-colon or a comma/coordinating conjunction).

Wrong, please share your examples. I'm curious.

[Deleted]

Jul 14, 2014 21:21:38 GMT -5 msventoux said:

Jul 14, 2014 21:09:09 GMT -5 Lizard Queen said:

I've found that reading things online has really hurt my writing skills. (Present company excluded, of course!) When there are glaring mistakes on news websites, you know there is a problem. And don't get me started on the comments. Rediculous, loose instead of lose, boarders instead of borders, and then add some crazy auto-corrects to the mix. I feel like I'm forgetting a lot just by being exposed to so much crap.

Before I spent so much time online I could spell and use most words correctly, without a second thought.  Now I have to carefully monitor myself to make sure I'm correctly using they're/their/there or loose/lose, among others.  Online access has expanded my knowledge in so many ways, but set me back in a few ways as well. 

Lol.  Welcome to the world of English teachers.  We read "independant" so often that we start to wonder if it is correct sometimes. 

[gs11rmb]

I don't like your friend's corrections. The sentences are very awkward.

[Cookies Galore]

Jul 15, 2014 7:30:06 GMT -5 @wrongsideof30 said:

I'm looking over revisions to the email I mentioned earlier. Here are the things that I didn't know:

Include a dash when using "however" and then a comma. Example: "I'm not interested in signing up right now -however, blah blah blah."
Another instance using dashes - "MSN would not be required to do anything different -or extra- for members enrolled in the bonus program.".

Also, more comma's needed to be added. Example: "There is a program in Jackson, Florida, that, right now, has a partnership with blah blah blah.". I didn't know to use a comma before the word "that".


These are the types of issues that I would like to work on.

Oy. Use a semicolon before transitional words like however. It should be "right now; however, blah blah."

[Deleted]

Yeah, this was not your problem. Phoenix's supervisor seems to be 'correcting' your grammar. 

[Deleted]

Yes, you might need to look to active versus passive, and removing smaller words, minimizing phrases, but the dash and more commas suggestion was way off I think. 

Can you give us the sentences prior to correction? 

[mmhmm]

"That" is a word that's over-used. It's not necessary a good deal of the time. If one says:  "I knew that Jimmy didn't like shrimp", "that" is superfluous. The sentence should be:  "I knew Jimmy didn't like shrimp." It's things like this with which people get caught up between how things are said and how things should be said/written. We hear something said often and we tend to pick it up even though it's not actually correct.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

There is a program in Jackson, Florida, that, right now, has a partnership with blah blah blah.". I didn't know to use a comma before the word "that

You don't. Someone got a little comma happy. My senior English teacher would have stabbed her with a pen after reading the above.

Same with the dashes, it reads really awkwardly.  It makes me want to punch the writer.

[Cookies Galore]

Jul 15, 2014 9:17:11 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

There is a program in Jackson, Florida, that, right now, has a partnership with blah blah blah.". I didn't know to use a comma before the word "that

You don't. Someone got a little comma happy. My senior English teacher would have stabbed her with a pen after reading the above.

Same with the dashes, it reads really awkwardly.  It makes me want to punch the writer.

You actually would use a comma after city and state in a sentence, but it's just a poorly worded sentence. It's not a comma before "that" as much as a comma after "Florida."

"I am from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area."
"Sue traveled to Akron, Ohio, and then Indiana."