As we talk about rules, some have ignored them and produced some amazing work.

"Some writers break the rules and get away with it while others are chastised for doing (what appears to be) the same thing.

E.E. Cummings ignored most of the rules and made up a few of of his own, and now his poetry is studied in universities. Cormac McCarthy didn’t use quotation marks with the dialogue in his novel, and he won a Pulitzer Prize."


Taken from parts of this article - How to Abuse and Neglect Punctuation Marks
http://www.writingforward.com/category/grammar/punctuation-marks

 

Quite possibly the single most-used tool in my writing arsenal is my computer's dictionary/thesaurus application. Sure, there are online dictionaries available. I also use Google quite extensively for research. But there are many times when I need a different word, and it's great having them available at my beckon call. I do have similar books sitting on my bookshelves...but they do gather dust. They are from another era, one that will never return.

Google (any search engine really) is probably the BEST tool for writing. Why? Because of a trillion web pages and images. If I'm writing about a small brewery on the outskirts of Bonn, perhaps I need some inspiration for the description. Google. Or perhaps I'm writing about someone traveling from West Palm Beach to Chicago, and I need to know what routes they'd take. Google!

You've heard it before, Google is your friend. It's so true. I remember early on in my writing here, I wrote Sad Lisa, a story set in NYC in the late 60s/early 70s. I needed the names of some theatres off-Broadway and found them. I needed to know a couple of the rising stars from back then, and found them. I needed to know if this great restaurant was around back then, and with a couple of minutes of research, I found out.

Google reduces the time for research from hours or even days to minutes. I, for one, think that's a great thing. The need for research is still there, it's simply that the tools have changed, and oh so much the better!

 

How about punctuation. Don't use commas to create a neverending sentence. And paragraph breaks are your friend. The care you show in typing something up is noticeable when you post it. That's all I have.

 

The dictionary/thesaurus app is definitely very useful. On a Mac its just a click away. If you highlight a word and bring up the contextual menu (two finger click on a trackpad, or control-click), it brings up a menu. If the word is recognized the first on the menu is 'Look up "word"'. Choosing that brings up the dictionary app (or an info panel depending on OS version, click on the heading to get to the app). If the word is not recognized, the first items on the menu are the spelling suggestions. Also very useful.

Once you're in the dictionary app, there are headings for dictionary and thesaurus. Clicking on the thesaurus heading gets you to the thesaurus. Most of the words in the dictionary and thesaurus are live links, so if you want to find the definition of an alternative suggested word, that's only a few clicks away.

As you say, Google is a good tool for research. They have a bunch of tools as well as just the basic search. Street view is great for getting a feeling for a location, like a small brewery on the outskirts of Bonn: https://goo.gl/maps/2U3gAsDDoox Or plotting a route through Harlem in New York, so you can see the best place to set up a sniper ambush.

If you're researching a pre-internet setting, Google books has a lot of information. They have 25 million volumes searchable. Out of copyright ones are viewable. A lot of newer ones you can get a preview of a few pages. Some you can see "snippets". Some unfortunately, you can only find that your search term appears in the book, but not the context. If you find a book with interesting information, there may be a link to buy the ebook, or where to borrow it, or where to buy the dead tree version (if its that important).

One useful way to search books is the NGram viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams That charts the popularity over time of the search phrase. It can be useful to see if a particular word or phrase was used at a particular time. If you search for "cowgirl position" it looks like that was used first in 1988. "reverse cowgirl" was first used in 1992.

You can check the usage in a particular time period by using the links along the bottom of the chart. They'll get you a Google books search confined to that time period. If the period isn't exactly what you want clicking on the date range gives you a chance to enter a "custom range". So if you search for "cunnilingus" before 1920, it was only used in the technical sense and only by doctors and lawyers. (You find that it was illegal in California, but a state supreme court decision in 1919 over turned that law. It was made illegal again in 1923 if you Google further.)

Google images is also useful if you want to see something to describe it. Or find out what something in an image is. Google images will find images from a vague description, and you can find one which looks like what you're looking for. Or if you have an image, you can search by image to find out where it came from, or what it is. So if a competition uses an image to inspire you, you can find where the original came from with a search my image. To get search by image, go to https://images.google.com and click on the camera icon in the search box.

An example of a vague description was a TV show. The episode was set in Berlin and there was a distinctive building. It looked like Toronto ( a lot of TV is filmed in Canada). A Google image search for "sphere on tower Berlin" showed it was the TV tower in Berlin. Not the CN tower in Toronto (search for "sphere on tower toronto" to see that).

 

I'm afraid I must be a bit of a Luddite as I usually have an actual dictionary/thesaurus by my side when I am writing. While it is slower and more cumbersome than using one built-in to your machine it does have the advantage of (whilst flipping through the pages to find one's intended word) causing other words to spring to mind randomly, sometimes a reminder of a long-forgotten word, sometimes a word one is unfamiliar with be one makes a mental note to attempt to use that word sometime in the future.

 

I just like the old fashion way of using a paper book. I learn new things every time I open one.

 

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Word Crimes, most never realize that one of Weird Al's pet peeves is grammar, so he actually wrote a serious song about it, he's dream is for it to be used in classrooms as a teaching tool.

 

The oatmeal's grammar comics.
http://theoatmeal.com/tag/grammar

 

Sticky Bump...

 

I write because everyone dreams of flying. My words are my wings, and I’m soaring.
(via wnq-writers)
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Do it because you enjoy it.

 

How to I enter something in KAW since its posted already

 

Thank you so much

 

Something I have noticed that I would point out to any writer, especially new ones; apart from the mantra of proofread, Proofread, PROOFREAD, take extra care with the title of your piece. Let's face it if there's a spelling mistake or typo in the title then people are unlikely to bother to even click on it to read your story - I certainly don't.

 

I never know what the most surprising thing to happen in a scene is, until I'm halfway though and it happens.

 

sticky and gooey bump...

 

Any advice for writing conversation?