Tenses are the way verbs change to show when something happened, either in the past (“She went…”), the present (“She’s going…”) or the future (“She will go…” etc.). Most verbs have two ‘aspects’: continuous (“He was writing a book…”) and simple (“He wrote a book.”), which show whether an action was completed. Obvious enough, but the beginning writer has a number of pitfalls to avoid. Continue reading “Getting It Right – Tenses for Dummies”
Tag: grammar
A Helping Hand…that which who are is…
I was summoned. The EM wanted to see me. I knew what it was: my dress code. Well, I did get Madonna’s cone bustier cheap on eBay—I was so very sorry about the EM’s eye. Or perhaps it was my body-piercing. Look, I found this dinky little stud with the initials ‘EM’ on it. Okay, perhaps the tongue wasn’t the best place for it, but you can’t dithcwiminite againtht thomeone jutht becauthe they have a sthpeeth impediment. Oh, I know…it was the tattoo. Come on, the tattooist was 93 and a bit deaf. How was I to know he’d misunderstood ‘Indies R Us’? I did tell him Indies started with an ‘I’ not a ‘U’….anyway, it was a bogof and the tattoo on my—oh, never mind.
Anyway I was a Very Worried Minion, and I was trepidating (is it only me that thinks trepidation should have its own verb?). I slunk into the EM’s bunker and there he was. Sitting with his head resting limply in his four hands. He’d written ‘Help’ with all the red M&Ms and was sucking the others up with a straw and pea-shooting them at his statuette of Popeye: I think he was trying to get them into his pipe. He was whimpering pathetically.
“Cathy, I’m confused, I’m nonplussed, I’m addled, I’m perplexed, I’m puzzled, I’m baffled and befuddled, I’m confounded, I’m flustered, I’m…”
Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, NO. It was worse than I thought. He’d swallowed the thesaurus.
“Help me, Cathy,” he continued after I’d wiped the dribble off his chin. I left him to digest, with Mr Pish sitting on his lap, rather worryingly scratching the EM’s ear, and I tried to make sense of his dilemma…
He was addled by two things—that/which/who, firstly. Continue reading “A Helping Hand…that which who are is…”
Pet Peeves: What Are Yours?
Pet peeves. The topic came up recently in a discussion with some other writers on Facebook. This one was specifically about the spoken and written language – English to be precise.
Now you need to know that I am over sixty. That makes me an official grey-hair (although I keep it red to match my fiery personality). My years have earned me the right to be curmudgeonly, a right I intend to exercise with abandon.
Along with those grey/red hairs come some attitudes and opinions to complement them – that is to say set-in-my-ways and fiery. And I likely have a pet peeve for every hair that hasn’t fallen out yet. Fortunately for you, the only ones I will rant about today have to do with English. Even so, some are likely to cause some smoldering resentment and maybe even a few flames of disagreement. Good! Continue reading “Pet Peeves: What Are Yours?”
Armless and Legless
Our wonderful interwebs are full of blogs and writing websites that showcase an endless procession of writing advice and tips. We’ve discussed the pros and cons here on Indies Unlimited many times, so I don’t want to go over old ground. While planning the content of this post in the quiet small hours, however, it seemed like a good idea at the time to take a slightly skewed, bizarro-world look at writing tips using our trusty list format. Now, it seems… well, slightly stupid. But since I didn’t have a backup, here it is, anyway: a new kind of list. Twenty Five Writing Tips That Probably Suck. Seriously, though, I’m not wasting anyone’s time: loosely hidden within this apparent drivel are some actual decent tips, once they’re extricated and unpacked. You’ll see. Continue reading “Armless and Legless”