Why Include The Serial Comma?

When we list three, four, or more things in a sentence, (How's that for showing, not telling?) standard English rules allow the last comma in the series (sometimes referred to as the "Oxford comma") to be optional. The writer may elect either to include it or to leave it out.

The Big Brick Review 2020 Essay Contest

The Big Brick Review seeks personal essays that build on the narrative of our lives, finding new insight to old struggles...old insight to new struggles...and all shades-of-gray in between.

A review of Word’s F7 key function

A grammar editor is a software facility that highlights errors in a text and suggests correct word choices and fixes misspellings. Most of these owe their existance to the first spell-check system, developed by a group of six linguists from Georgetown University in the late 1970s for the IBM 360 mainframe computer.

How do I add Grammarly for Microsoft Office to Word and Outlook?

Are you are writer? Want to make sure your writing is error-free and easy to read? An online grammar checker and proofreading tool like Grammarly can help avoid embarrassing typos and grammatical errors. You can use it to make sure your book, article or blog post is accurate and easy to read.

Dialogue And Characters

Dialogue is a wonderful way to show characterization, and also the relationships between your characters. Not only what people say, but the way they say it, gives the reader quality information about your character.

Sources of Photos for Commercial Use

Illustrating your book and website articles can be challenging. But using websites where you can find photos that are royalty free for commercial use is very helpful. You can use the photos as they are or use image software to change them into something new.

Writing Spy Fiction with an Unputdownable Plot

When you’re writing spy fiction you have one overriding goal: to keep the reader turning the pages. There’s no greater compliment to the spy thriller author than for their readers to say ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ But how can we keep the reader engrossed? How many supposed thrillers have you abandoned because you lost interest in them?

Short Story Hacks: 10 Tips to Improve Your Creative Writing

Seton Hill University is a liberal arts university in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Formerly a women's college, it became a coeducational university in 2002 and enrolls about 2,200 students. Dennis G. Jerz is a Associate Professor of English–New Media Journalism and this is from his blog. It's the winner of the 2011 Best Academic Weblog / John Lovas Memorial Weblog Award.

How To Write A Mystery That Will Knock Them Dead

Good mysteries are also good novels. They have memorable characters, an exciting plot, lively dialogue and writing that "shows" instead of "tells".

15 Smart Writing Tips For Crafting Copy That Sticks

To help you do this well, 15 members of Forbes Communications Council gave us their tips for writing short, quick copy that will stick with your audience long after they've read it. Follow their tips to improve your marketing copywriting.

Hints on How to Create Characters

Did you ever ride a bus to school? It's not the bus that is important, nor the trip, it's your fellow students. If you didn't ride a bus, sit for a minute and go up and down the rows of your classroom, at different ages, and maybe from different schools. These school mates are the fodder for any character you want to include in any writing you may do. How so?

Author Introduction Sample

Here a great sample of how you could introduce yourself to other on this Web site. In this article an author shares information about aspects of her writing style, personality, and her books.

Sidelined by Steroids

BarbaraHelene Smith just published Sidelined by Steroids. The second Connie Murphy Mystery e-book, available on Amazon.com.

Death by Dysfunction

BarbaraHelene Smith published Death by Dysfunction, the first in the Connie Murphy Mystery series. Connie is an FDA investigator, who is dedicated to protecting public safety. While conducting seemingly routine inspections ...

Easy guide on how to write a book review: Steps you need to follow

A book review is a critical analysis and evaluation of a work written in a scientific, literary, or journalistic style to ...

New Venue to Showcase My Books

According to their website "Hometown Reads is digital author platform focused on showcasing books from local authors across the United States. We want to highlight authors in their hometowns, while inspiring local readers to discover hidden treasures in their hometown. We desire to create a collaborative author community, where authors exchange local book marketing advice, engage in cross-promotion of one another, and network with community organizations."

Writing Contests 2020

Discover the finest writing contests of 2020 for fiction and non-fiction authors of short stories, poetry, essays and more. Updated weekly, these contests are vetted by Reedsy to weed out the scammers and time-wasters.