Week three: Grammar

My 11th secret of writing well combines sentiments from "Frozen" and Nike: Let it go and just do it. Most of the writers I've met whom I admire are perfectionists by nature. They have a vision for their writing and want to meet that expectation the first time. However, the best advice I've received from these individuals is to let go of the initial perfectionism and just get the words onto the paper. While grammar and organization are imperative, focusing too much on these components can inhibit the creative process and result in writer's block. Once the word vomit is complete, the writer may don the editor's hat and get to work chopping, marking and sculpting as convention demands.

Mistake #1

The screenshot below is from a newsletter sent out by the WSU Alumni Association. The way it is currently written, the possessive apostrophe is in the wrong place. However, a better fix might be to add "a" to clarify that they are referring to a singular homeowner. Therefore, the first sentence needs to be changed to either "A burglary is one of a homeowner's worst fears," or "A burglary is one of homeowners' worst fears."

Mistake #2

This screenshot is from another email, courtesy of WSU. There are a couple things going on with this one. The first is the extra word in the phrase "faculty, students, and staff are can communicate..." The second error is the sentence fragment at the end. Although this was sent in email form, this fragment didn't follow the more formal structure of the rest of the email. 

Mistake #3

The email I pulled this from was a grammatical nightmare. Right off the bat, we have missing punctuation, a comma splice and random capitalization. Then there is a run-on sentence, which could be remedied with a period, and more missing punctuation.