Publishing stories of fascinating Prairie People and Unsung Heroes

Welcome to the blog of Deana Driver - author, editor, and publisher of DriverWorks Ink, a book publishing company based in Saskatchewan. We publish stories of inspiring, fascinating Prairie people and unsung Canadian heroes - written by Prairie authors including Deana Driver. We also publish genres of healing and wellness, humour, children's fiction, and rural poetry. Visit our website to learn more about our books.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Pobody's Nerfect!

Here are some common mistakes made by inexperienced writers (and some professional ones, too)...
- They randomly change tenses. If you are telling a story that happened in the past, stay in the past. Don't shift to present tense and then shift back again - especially in the same paragraph.
- They put an apostrophe where it doesn't belong. Don't put one in '1970's' or any in 'they were in their '50's'. Use '1970s' and 'in their 50s'.
- They use that instead of which. 'The school which gave me a diploma.' It should be 'school that gave me'.

Read and critically re-read your work before sending it out. I know, I know - that's what editors are for...

Mistakes I commonly make...
- typing the word 'the' incorrectly. Thank you, spellcheck, for correcting my tehs.
- typing Manitoba and Saskathcewan incorrectly - See! there you go! It's always Mantioba in my documents. And Saskatchewan! Why couldn't I live somewhere with less letters - like Iowa or Ohio!
- placing single quotation marks on the wrong side of the punctuation. They belong inside the period, I've been told. Argh!

 Oh, well. Pobody's nerfect!

See Pobody's Nerfect #2.

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