Monday Muddle: woman, women

In honour of International Women’s Day, I thought it would be good to sort out the confusion between woman and women. If this little memory trick helps, please feel free to use it. The letter A is the first letter of the alphabet—letter number ONE. So if you are talking about only one woman, use an A. The letter E comes later in the alphabet, so more than one. E also looks like a backwards 3 which is also more than one. If you are talking about multiple women, use an E.

Monday Muddle: woman: (n) ONE singular female human women: (n) MORE THAN ONE female human

Wednesday Writing

Although it is an editor’s job to catch all of your mistakes and omissions, editors are still human. The more overwhelmed they are with all the little things that you could have fixed yourself, the less energy they will have for the things you wouldn’t have caught. Help them to help you by making your manuscript as clean as possible.

A red pen against a white page with this caption: The Value of Self-Editing The cleaner you can make your manuscript before sending it to an editor, the better job your editor will do for you, and the less money it will cost.

Tuesday Two

Write a story with only two sentences. Use the photo for inspiration if you wish.

Photo by Pavel Kalenik on Unsplash.

A young man doing a handstand, but his head and feet are pointing in the same direction, perpendicular to his arms.

Monday Muddle: forth, fourth

In preparation for National Grammar Day, I thought it would be good to address the muddle of forth and fourth. March fourth was chosen as National Grammar Day because it is the only date that is also a complete sentence—if you make a minor adjustment to the spelling.

Monday Muddle: forth: (adv) forward or outward from a starting point fourth: (adj, n) ordinal number; number four in a series; 25% of the whole

Wednesday Writing

How do you run a marathon? One step at a time. Any major project takes time, commitment, and consistent effort. You can’t just snap your fingers and have a completed project. But you can create big things one small piece at a time.

A winding pathway of open books on leaf-covered ground. Caption: How do you write a whole book? You don’t have to write a complete book. Write a part of a book—any part you want—and then another and another. Eventually you can put them all together, and a complete book will have happened. If you can write a paragraph, you can write a complete book. You just have to keep doing it.