Another gem is The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne

I can use words just fine. At least I think I can. Punctuation? That is an entirely different story.I just never can figure out where all those little critters belong I think I write in the same cadence in which I speak which is one long sentence until I draw a breath or pass out from lack of oxygen whichever comes first does old age allow some leeway on the subject?

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. No, I am not going back to school at sixty something so just fergit it. I swear by grammar check in word and if I get rich someday I am buying one of them thar ” we figure it out for you” programs.

Oddly enough, my biggest problem is, well I can’t remember the word right now but it is when you squish two words together. I speak in seperate words. ” She is not going to the dance as planned because she is no longer interested in such frivolity”.

Probably because teachers don’t teach grammar and the rules of writing (they may not even know them themselves) and may have taken the line that rules “stifle creativity.”

I’ve never been a fan of “nontraditional” writing in any form: authors who don’t use quotation marks to set of dialogue, or who don’t believe in paragraphs, or who switch tenses (sometimes even within the same paragraph!). I’ve often stopped reading a story, no matter how engaging, if the writing is terrible.

I think every writer should spend some time learning how to copyedit — my first stint as a copy editor taught me how to be a better writer.

My favorite reference books are Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook.