TheWritersBag.com

Did you ever watch the old cartoons where the character would be trying to make a decision and suddenly there were two miniature images of himself above and to the side of his head and one was dressed as an angel telling him to do the right thing and the other was dressed as a devil telling him to do the wrong thing?

That’s what happens to me every time I sit down to write about a rule of grammar, punctuation or usage. Suddenly an angel who looks like me pops up and says, “Tell them to do the right thing and obey this rule,” and at the same time a devil who also looks like me materializes and whispers, “Don’t listen to him. Rules are for sissies. Hemingway broke them. Cormack McCarthy breaks them all the time. Jack Kerouac didn’t even know there were any rules. Let ’em write. Screw the rules!”

That’s what I have to contend with all the time – not only when I write articles about writing rules, but whenever I write anything. For example, the opening paragraph of this article is one long, run-on sentence. The angel-me and the devil-me almost came to blows over that one. If I were writing for a magazine editor or a client, I could never turn that in. But I’m not, and I’ll tell you, that sentence felt good! In my life as a professional writer, the devil-me rarely gets to win.

There’s a reason for that. It has to do with the fact that most rules exist to make written messages clear and understandable. Case in point:

• Sally shot herself while still in elementary school.
• Sally shot, herself, while still in elementary school.

These are the exact same sentences except for the two tiny little commas in the second sentence. Those commas are of life and death importance to Sally, however. The first sentence says she committed suicide with a gun in elementary school. The second says that she, herself, shot guns while still a young girl. Two very different messages.

The rules are important. But then again, it’s easy to get so carried away with them that they tighten you up and pinch off your flow of creativity. It’s a dynamic conflict and in order to write well, it probably has to be that way. That’s why the angels and demons within us will never stop prodding us as long as we write.

Your first job as a writer is to get the attention of your audience. Until you do that – until you make them read what you’ve written – you can’t achieve whatever objectives you’re trying to accomplish.

One of the best ways to capture readers’ interest is to make them so curious that they have to go on reading. The headline of one of the most successful print advertisements in history read something like, “Everyone Laughed When He Sat Down.” The ad was successful because the readers who saw the headline had to know why everyone laughed when the guy sat down. And they had to read the ad to get the answer.

You can use curiosity to pull your readers into your text in almost every kind of writing you do. Need to write an e-mail to tell employees to turn in their reimbursement reports by Friday? Try this subject line: “If you wait until Saturday, your money is ours.” That should grab more attention than, “Reimbursement reports due Friday.”

Magazine writers, fiction writers, poets, even journalists use this technique frequently. Give it a shot.

You’ve probably figured out by now that I have a passion for pointing out common writing mistakes. This no doubt springs from the guilt I feel for making those same blunders so often during my professional writing career. All I can say is, “I’m deeply sorry, clients and editors, but not enough to issue refunds.”

Now for the all-too-common gaffe of the day. Let’s start with a quiz. Which of the following sentences are correct?

1. We had over 200 accidents just last month.
2. When we get over 50 inches of snow, we’ll start the ski lifts.
3. Over 50 percent of the fighter pilots in the squadron never came home.
4. I have written over 350 articles for national magazines.
5. The salaries of firefighters jumped over $5,000 per year.

Which do you think are correct? If you say “none of them” you get the gold star. Granted, not one of these sentences would make you sound like an idiot, and the reason for that is simple: almost everyone makes the same mistake. But just because it’s so common doesn’t mean it’s right.

You can set each of the sentences right by replacing “over” with “more than.” The rule involved here is surprisingly simple when you consider how often it is abused:

RULE: “Over” generally refers to spatial relationships, while “more than” is used with numbers.

The easy way to remember this next time you want to write or say “over” is to change it to “more than” if you’re referring to numbers or things that can be counted.

That’s not to say, of course, that the phrase “more than” must always refer to numbers. “It’s more than I can take,” and “The book delivered more than I expected, given its author,” are examples. The point is that when you use “over” with numbered items, watch out. It will usually be wrong.

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