Even pros who have been writing for decades can fall prey to grammar goofs.
Writing Tip for Today: Here’s a refresher on crafting tight, effective sentences.
Jots and Apostrophes
One of the most common writing errors is confusion about apostrophes. An apostrophe takes the place of a letter or letters—a shorter less formal word results. If you’ve ever received a Christmas card addressed to The Smith’s, the obvious question becomes, “The Smith’s what?” Apostrophes are used to denote ownership. The Smiths needs no apostrophe.
Another tricky apostrophe area is in the neutral pronoun it. If you want to write the shorter form of it is, an apostrophe takes the place of the second “I,” resulting in it’s. EX: It is raining becomes, “It’s raining.” But if you refer to an animal or inanimate object the correct pronoun is it. To correctly refer to an animal’s coat, for instance, write its—no apostrophe. EX: Its coat was soft and sleek.
By using apostrophes to shorten words, you bring the reader closer. More formal prose with no apostrophes may be necessary for an important document such as a law or oration. But if you write for a general audience, use apostrophes to sound more casual and intimate with the reader—as if you were speaking to them personally. The camera zooms in close with a warm, casual tone.
Danglers and Danger
In one of my recent essays, I hit publish before I realized that one sentence contained a glaring mistake. I wrote that my husband recovered from a car crash in a rehab facility. Now we all know there are relatively few cars crashing into rehabs. The lesson? Be careful about where you place participial phrases in your sentences.
Strunk & White’s Elements of Style—still a valuable resource after more than 50 years, tells writers that participial phrases at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject. If that sounds like gibberish, consider a ludicrous example: As a mother of five, with another on the way, my ironing board is always up. Most ironing boards don’t have children.
For more head-spinning rules on gerunds and correct participial phrasing, review your copy of Elements of Style. You’ll find all sorts of proper rules that often don’t mesh with our culture’s casual speaking style. Thus, Blake and myself stayed home (incorrect) becomes Blake and I stayed home. Simple and direct.
Avoid relying on adverbs (those pesky “ly” words) to spice up your prose. 
Cart Before Horse
No good refresher omits the clarion call to use the active rather than the passive voice. This idea refers to active verbs versus passive verbs. Active verbs denote some action. Inactive or passive verbs refer to a state of being.
Enhancing your concrete sensory detail champions one reason to use more active verbs. With specific and active verbs, readers can imagine a much more particular scene. You might write, “She placed the flowers on the table.” But if you substitute placed for a more active and specific word, readers get a clearer picture. She placed becomes, “She tossed the flowers, slammed them, etc. gives readers a more specific attitude and action to imagine.
To write clearly and effectively, choose verbs that reflect the mood and attitude of the subject or character. Avoid relying on adverbs (those pesky “ly” words) to spice up your prose. She gingerly placed the flowers on the table might become She arranged the flowers on the table. All these details might not matter to some readers, but you can be sure that they do matter to editors and agents. Brush up on your skills!
