I know that the subject of air shows is a little touchy at the moment, but I had an experience at the Bournemouth Air show last week that I just had to share. And, no, thankfully nothing crashed.
I’ve been to a few air shows in my time, and seeing a crowd of spectators looking into the sky at some crazy pilot pulling off a spectacular manoeuvre is nothing new to me.
But this was…
And so here is the next instalment of my series that looks to apply every single rule from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style to my manuscript. Today, rules 6, 7 & 8.
6. Do not break sentences in two.
What S&W are saying here is to be careful with where you put a full-stop. Ok, so it sounds elementary and their example below is really just a case of bad writing:
I met them on a Cunard liner many years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York.
See. Just bad writing.
They do, however, mention the clipping of a sentence if a certain emphasis is warranted:
Again and again he called out. No reply.
I do this quite a lot in my writing. S&W’s advise on the matter is that it’s fine in dialogue, but when used in narrative one must ensure the emphasis is warranted lest a clipped sentence seem merely a blunder in syntax or in punctuation.
I’ll do that. Thanks.
To celebrate getting my short story published in the New Accelerator magazine, I have decided to put it out as a blog post. Enjoy…
To Serve a King
The pressgangs never came around here. Why would they? Pickings for naval impressment were slim in Albany. As one of the kingdom’s more remote regions and situated near the petering end of the Good Hope trade wind, the place was populated mostly by farmers. Granted, there were plenty of scrapyarders and a handful of metal workers here, but experienced sailors were few and far between.
And yet, the dreaded pressgangs had arrived.
And so here is the next instalment of my series that looks to apply every single rule from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style to my manuscript. Rules 3 to 5.
ELEMENTARY RULES OF USAGE (cont.)
3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.
This is something that I have always done. Continue reading
Ok, so it’s an incredibly rare occurrence that makes me utter, “Well done Disney,” but in this case I think it’s valid.
Why?
Because I saw this today…
Oh yes.
And the pat-on-the-back goes out to Disney (and J.J.Abrams) for not only making these films in a manner that’s honest to the original trilogy, but also for keeping alive Lucas’s vision of the Empire as Nazis. I mean, just look at that screen shot. It could have been taken in Germany circa. 1940. I think they’ve made a bold decision by including such a political assertion in an age of such political correctness.
So like I said.
Well done.
P.S. Only 129 days to go…
In my previous post I talked a little about the Oxford Comma. And in searching for an image for said post, I found this:
Just had to reblog this. Thanks to BooksandOpinions for the original.
So I’ve just finished reading Stephen King’s On Writing, and yes I know, I’m a bit late to the game on that one, but hey, I got there in the end.
First of all, I must say that it’s a brilliant book and well worth reading if, like me, you are in the infancy of your novel-writing adventure. I was given On Writing by my wonderful wife as a birthday present, along with Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. King mentions this book in his introduction, obviously holding it in high esteem, and then goes on to quote it many times throughout his own book. In truth he calls it the only book on writing that isn’t bullshit – his words, not mine.
And so I have decided to apply The Elements of Style to my manuscript, blogging about as I go. I shall take each of the 43-or-so rules, covering a number in each new post, depending on how much work needs to be done for each rule. Continue reading
It seems that everywhere we go online nowadays, we’re continually confronted by articles shouting about ‘20 things you didn’t know about that…’ or ‘the 10 best things for doing this…’ or ‘the 5 top articles that contain useless lists…’
And so, in celebration of this internet phenomenon (no I didn’t spell that right at the first attempt), I am going to write my very own post that has a list. Mine is the five stages you need to get through before your book is published (that’s in the traditional way, not self-pubbing, in which case the list stops after number 4).
Oh, and I’m going in reverse order because it’s more dramatic that way.
At Stage Five, we have the most obvious (and some would argue the most easy) of all the stages: writing the book. That’s right folks, without actually writing the book, not much else can happen. We are the sole masters of our destiny here, which doesn’t really happen again during the process, so enjoy this bit. Continue reading
How Do You Pronounce Eynon? 