How To Use Language Properly


According to The Rules and common practice language has only one right way to be used. But is that true? Isn’t it proved by time and experience language is fluid, subject to change to suit the occasion it is used?

Listen to what Stephen Fry has to say on the subject. I think you might agree, even if you are an author and like me want to adhere to the rules and regulations of the current language formalities.

So,what do we do? How do we use this beautiful English Language properly? First of all we need to determinate which spelling we care to use. American or British? Both English but there’s not only a whole ocean dividing the two, there’s a kind of language barrier too.

Take for example the word ‘wilful’. According to my American friends this will be a wrong use of language and  the word should be spelled as following, ‘willful’. There are many more of such examples, which I’m not going to give here.

What I will say on the matter is, be aware of the choice you make. Either use US spelling or UK, don’t mix the two. Of course there will be American readers who will trip over your British spelling and might even mention in a review you don’t know how to spell. But as authors we should know that can happen and move on. Maybe write your next novel according to US spelling rules to show you do know how to spell, or mention in the front matter of your book you write according to British spelling rules because you are a Brit. Problem solved. Of course, this works the other way around too.

The next thing you should take into consideration is what you write. The rules for fiction differ from those for poetry, as those for non-fiction differ from a dissertation, and a blog post differs from a letter to your mom. Unless of course you use your blog to keep your mom in the loop on your life. 🙂 But that is a whole different kind of blog than the common writers blog. What I mean is what Stephen Fry so eloquently put in the video, our language should reflect the occasion, like our behaviour and clothes do. That is the basic rule.

But … Yes, I have a but. Shouldn’t there be room for individuality? What about artistic freedom?

Ha! Yes, we are artists and have a certain idea on how our work should be put into words, but those words have to make sense to the reader. Throw away all the rules and do as you please and you will have no readers for the simple reason your readers will not know what you mean.

It is a fine line we must walk. Write in our own voice. Have the characters speak the way we think they should speak and yet keep it within ‘normal’ range. Keep it eligible to the general public.

If I were to write this:

“I crave to smoke my coffee and dance the words before slipping into that warm canal.”

Would you know I mean the character wants to roast his coffee while he is creating a choreography and thinks on making love to his girlfriend after he is done? Misunderstanding and confusion is what happens if we throw away all conventions and just do as we please.

It doesn’t only applies to the words themselves. Grammar, punctuation, plot, dialogue, it all is language and it all has to adhere to at least the basic rules, no matter which style guide you favour.

So how do we use language properly? By choosing a set of rules from a certain style guide and  stick to them. Be consistent in your choice of spelling and take heed of your audience.

I know it’s not an answer to fit the box, but I guess there is no answer, because let’s face it. In a couple of hundred years our language will have evolved again and the rules as they are today will no longer apply. Like those from Shakespeare’s time no longer apply to the language of today. New words emerge and old ones are forgotten.

So write, write well and honour the language as best you can. When you’ve reached the limit of your ability to know the rules, use that editor to get the last wrongs ‘write’.

Words Often Confused

There are words that are simple–or sometimes obscure–and yet we sometimes have trouble using them properly. When writing, we make mistakes and only find them after proofreading, or not, which leaves us embarrassed. To prevent this from happening in future, I’d like to take a stroll down a wordy lane with you.

A or An?

That one’s easy. At least that’s what you would think. When the first letter of the word following has the sound of a consonant, we should use “a” and when that following word starts with a letter that sounds like a vowel, we use “an.”

Difficulties arise when using abbreviations. Let’s look at “FAQ.” Pronounced as a word, “fak” would become “a FAQ,” because the first letter of FAQ is not only a consonant, but also sounds like one. Spelled out, the first letter transforms from a consonant to a vowel, leaving us with “an eff-a-q.”

The difference a letter makes.

Swap an “s” for a “c” in advice and you get advise. Now, that’s one easily made mistake that changes everything about the word.

Advice is a noun meaning recommendation, while advise (verb) is the giving of a recommendation.

What if you substitute the ‘e’ for an ‘i’ in ‘complement’? That would turn the addition which serves to form a whole into a compliment, i.e. praise (verb or noun when it’s used as an expression of admiration).

To separate or stick together?

Then we have those words people are inclined to glue together, or not when they should.

“All together now,” said the conductor to the choir as one singer was out of tune.

“It wasn’t all together his fault.” But this is a fault, because he was alone, so he couldn’t be “all together.” Here it should read: “It wasn’t entirely his fault,” or rather: “It wasn’t altogether his fault.”

And what to think of “any more” versus “anymore”? Remember not to make any more (additional) mistakes after reading this, because you don’t need to anymore (nowadays).

Oh, those look-a-likes!

What to think of those words that sound the same, but mean completely different things? They are even written almost the same.

Allude, elude and illude, what to use when? If you refer indirectly to something, you allude, but if you avoid being captured, you elude, and when you mislead, you illude.

Not so difficult after all, just a thing to remember.

But what about ‘effect’ and ‘affect,’ which to use when? Put the pair in one sentence and their difference shows immediately. “The effect of her actions affected me.” Or in other words, “Her actions caused an emotional response,” i.e. influenced me.

That just about sums up the big difference between those two small words.

And then there is that elusive trio: lie, lay, and lie. Who doesn’t mistake one for the other at times?

“I will not lie, not down and not to you.” As you can see that one word—lie—has two meanings in this one sentence. They sound the same, are written the same, and only context reveals the meaning of the word. First one, to recline, and the second one, to tell a falsehood. Laying something down changes how the word is written, because a thing is inherently inert and cannot recline on its own volition. It needs to be laid.

“I like to lie about when I lie down for a nap, while I lay a book over my eyes.” All three possibilities of the trio in Present Tense. As you can hear—and see—the two things done by a human are written the same, while the one concerning an object is once again written differently. A good clue to keep in mind: When in doubt, if an object is in play, use lay. But remember that goes for Present Tense.

“I laid a book over my eyes as I lay down for a nap, but I lied about it.” All in Past Tense. As you can see the ‘rule’ given one paragraph up doesn’t work in past tense.

Basically with the verbs lie and lay, you just need to memorise their proper use. Just remember “to lie” is a thing humans do with their body, while “to lay” is something a person does with a thing.

Often, or rather mostly, we rely on the spellchecker to find our typos. What if we scramble our word into another also existing one and the spellchecker doesn’t catch it because it’s switched off, or the word just isn’t in its dictionary? “The tied came rolling in.” All perfectly proper English words, but one is wrong. Not the word itself, just which word is used. It should read: “The tide came rolling in.”

And that’s why I can’t stress it enough: Do not rely on the machine to check for typos, but read and re-read and then proofread and have it proofread, before you send something off into the world and to your readers.

This is certainly not a complete list; there’s much to be mistaken about and you wouldn’t be the first to make such mistakes, or the last. Keep in mind to proofread and don’t wail like a whale when you’ve fallen for the wile of words while you weren’t paying attention.

(Originally published in The Writers Beat Quarterly Issue #36)

Quotation and Punctuation

And she said, “Let’s look at quotation marks and punctuation.”

wtflucille ball

The name of those nifty little floaters, the quotation marks, gives us a decent clue as to what they are used for–to set apart what a person has said at any point in time, which is later repeated verbatim by another. But quoted speech needs punctuation, and it needs to be in the right place. Let’s see if we can give you an insight on how this should be done.
 Single word quote.
 Even if a quote is just a single quoted word, it goes inside quotation marks.
 She said, “Walk.”
 You see? The period also goes inside the quotation marks to end the sentence as well as the quote itself. Easy, and logical.

Quoting a question.

What if the quote is a question? Then the question mark goes inside quotation marks.

She asked, “Can you walk?”

But what if we ask about a quote? Ah, there you have an exception to the rule. Then the question mark goes outside the quotation marks.

Can you tell me if she said, “If he can’t walk, he falls”?

There is no punctuation ending the quoted sentence. That’s because we only need one ending punctuation with punctuation marks and, like in nature, the strongest wins. Question trumps period. Hence, no period after falls is needed. And what if there’s a question about a quoted question? Sounds difficult, doesn’t it? It’s not. Question and quote have equally strong question marks, so which one should win? Since we use only one ending punctuation (we’re talking about the US rules now), we place it inside the quotation marks.
Can you tell me if she asked, “Did he fall?”

Quoting inside a quote.

Now let’s get wild and quote inside a quote. Do we then end up with rows and rows of quotation marks? Nah, that would be funny and confusing. You can just use a set of double ones for the whole quote and single ones for the quote inside the quote. (Remember we’re still looking at the US rules.) Can you still follow what I’m saying? Wait, let me show you.

He said, “Can you tell me if she asked, ‘Did he fall?’”
As you can see, there are only three floaters at the end of the sentence and again the ending punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.

A direct quote.

To make it even simpler, we only use quotation marks to set off a direct quotation.
“When did he fall?” she asked.
But not when you use the following sentence: She asked when he fell.
That is essentially the same as above, only it is not a direct quote. Hence, no quotation marks.
Exceptions, don’t you just love them? They establish the rules and keep us on our tippytoes.

Block quoting.

What if we have a really long quote? Say, more than three lines in length? (That is actually the rule, or was it the exception?) Anyway, when we have such a long quote, there are no quotation marks at all. Instead we use the colon.
What! A colon? I thought a colon’s used for the introduction of a list? Yeah, it is, but we use it for looong quotes, too.
Let’s take a sidestep into colon land. When a quote is too long for proper quotation marks, we use the colon after the introductory sentence and leave a blank line above and below the quote.
Not that we will use block quotes often in fiction, but if you should ever write a non-fiction article and you need to quote another source, it will come in handy to know how to handle a big chunk of text.
Like in this following example where a trait from a certain character is unearthed by the use of quoting other data.
The old text presented explained it like this:

George G. Gruesommich went walking in a bush and stared at the trees until he was an absolute, green-eyed, brown-fingered, soil-smeared forest fiend. His feet were so dirty, he could no longer run, and he fell on his nose, which was now just as soil-smeared as the rest of his body.

After reading that, the reason for his disliking of gardening is obvious.

Quoting text that has an error in spelling or grammar.

And finally there is always the chance that you have to quote something with a SPaG error. For that we have sic, which basically means “This is how the original material was.” We place it in italics and in brackets after the mistake.

In the other text it was written, “This is how the originale [sic] material was.”

I hope this summary gives you a better understanding of quotation marks and how to properly punctuate around them. Go on, have your characters speak up, or let them even quote one another. Have fun “quoting the quoted.”