For any job, there’s a body of knowledge and a skillset you must acquire before you can do it well. Having that knowledge is called “knowing the ropes,” ever since the time when sailors aboard tall ships had to know which line trimmed which sail.
You want to be a writer? You’ll have to know the ropes of that profession, at least to some extent. Just as a sailing ship’s ropes seem confusing at first and more understandable after time spent studying, so the ‘ropes’ of writing can be learned. Specifically, I want to address those tricky English language rules you learned long ago in grade school and have since forgotten.
Why is it important for you to re-learn those rules? If you send your story to a publishing house, and the editor sees you haven’t mastered the basics of English, it won’t matter how compelling your story is. It’s just not worth the editor’s time, so your story gets rejected. If you self-publish, your lack of knowledge will be out there for readers to see. Your story might be captivating, but readers get tripped up when you demonstrate an ignorance of English. You’ll get bad reviews.
Here are a few of those rules your Language Arts teacher tried to instill:
- Affect and Effect. Usually, ‘affect’ is a verb meaning influence, while ‘effect’ is a noun meaning result, as in: Adding salt affected the taste, which produced a satisfying effect on her palate.
- Farther vs. Further. ‘Farther’ refers to linear distance only. ‘Further’ refers to types of extent other than distance, as in: As he watched her run farther in the marathon, his excitement increased further.
- Its vs. It’s. “It’s” is an exception to the rule about apostrophe-s indicating possession. In this one case, “It’s” is a contraction for ‘it is.’ Use ‘its’ for possession, as in: The dog gnawed its bone.
- Lie and Lay. This one’s complicated, but in present tense, use ‘lie’ when there’s no direct object, and use ‘lay’ when there is (when you lay an object down). I’ll lay this pillow here, and then you can lie down on it.
- Punctuation inside or outside quotes. Commas and periods go inside quotation marks; semicolons and colons go outside; exclamation and question marks go inside if part of the quotation, and outside if not.
- That and Which. ‘That’ introduces restrictive clauses and ‘which’ introduces nonrestrictive clauses as in: The blogpost that elicited the most comments was the one about English rules, which can be confusing. The clause after ‘that’ restricts the sentence’s meaning; the clause after ‘which’ doesn’t.
- Very Unique. ‘Unique’ means one of a kind. Therefore nothing can very unique, or quite unique.
- Was vs. Were. Use ‘was’ for verbs in the indicative mood, where you’re stating something that is or could be true, as in: If I was to go to your place this afternoon, we could watch the game. Use ‘were’ for verbs in the subjunctive mood, where you’re stating opinions, wishes, etc., as in: If you were a player on the team, you’d get me free tickets to every game.
These are just some of the tricky English rules you need to know. I know it seems confusing, and you might be tempted to give up writing. But if the story’s in you and wants to get out, you won’t give up.
You can learn the ropes by any or all of these methods:
- Join a critique group, and benefit from the knowledge of other amateur writers
- Take an adult English class at a local community college
- Use a word processor that highlights grammatical mistakes and poor word choices
- As you write, if you’re unsure of the proper usage or phrasing, mark the sentence for later review, and look up the answer on a trusted website.
You don’t have to know all the ropes, but enough so your editor doesn’t gag while reading your manuscript. As for me, I’m no English teacher, I’m just—
Poseidon’s Scribe