As with other grammar issues, verb mood can trip up a writer and stunt the writing process. Avoid confusion, frustration, and errors by getting ahead of the game. Verb moods indicate the way a verb conveys an action or state of being: imperative indicative subjunctive Imperative Recall that this mood signals a command, request, or…
Category: Boston Chick-Ago
Comma Sense
Is what you remember about comma placement necessarily true? Is your manuscript packed with commas? In this article, I refer to The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) to tackle tricky comma situations and situations where you may think you need a comma but don’t. Keep in mind different style books may have different rules about…
Dashes in Dialogue
The em dash can be a great tool to speed pace and create realistic dialogue. Dash placement matters when formatting dialogue that contains sudden breaks. What causes these breaks? The character who is speaking cuts his own dialogue short. One character interrupts another’s dialogue. The narrator breaks up dialogue. Why It Matters As with other…
Sticky-Note Diary: Adjective Rabbit Hole
Sections 5.91-3 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., (CMS) discuss a variety of adjectival predicaments. Writers might study these sections on their quest to figure out how to deal with multiple adjectives in succession. Coordinate adjectives require commas. Phrasal adjectives have their own rules. Complicating matters, these rules have exceptions. Situations can get…
Using “They” As A Singular Pronoun
According to The Chicago Manual of Style, they, as a gender-neutral pronoun referencing an individual, was chosen in 2015 as the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year. When I first learned about pronouns, a singular antecedent always required a singular pronoun: “Beth brought her laptop to class.” However, some individuals prefer they as their individual…
Sticky-Note Diary: Italics or Underline
Long before I bought my Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), 17th ed., I’d researched whether I should underline that which I wanted to italicize. I read (I forget where) that although in the past doing so was necessary, nowadays it’s not. However, in my last year of college–recently–two different older professors underlined my italics when…
Sticky-Note Diary: Tricky “One”
How To Ensure Proper Noun-Verb Agreement When “One” Mingles with the Plural During a grammar and style class I took a couple of years ago, I asked my professor a question she was unable to answer: When a sentence contains the dependent clause (often the subject complement) “one of those people who [verb],” is the…
Sticky-Note Diary: Italics or Underline?
Despite what I think I know about English grammar, I continually encounter tricky grammatical situations. Most of the time I find the answer in my hard copy of The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). As you can see from the picture of my CMS, a number of sticky notes mark sections I’ve looked up. In…