Grammar-ease: It’s/who’s vs its/whose

Here is a grammar refresher on using it’s/its and who’s/whose.

It’s extremely common to see mistaken use of it’s and its, but this is a simple rule:

It’s is a contraction for “it is” or “it has.” Period. Only use it’s to replace “it is” or “it has.” Its is possessive and means belonging to it.

And similarly:

Who’s is a contraction for “who is” or “who has.” Period. Whose is possessive and means belonging to who.

Those are simple, right?

Other possessive pronouns don’t have apostrophes: theirs, ours, yours, my, his, hers. For instance, we don’t write:                     But we do write:

• The camping gear is their’s.               The camping gear is theirs.
• Those kayaks are our’s.                       Those kayaks are ours.
• That assignment is your’s.                  That assignment is yours.
• My’s bicycle still looks new.              My bicycle still looks new.
• His’s car barely runs.                            His car barely runs.
• Her’s prom dress is gorgeous.           Her prom dress is gorgeous.
• It’s nest.                                                      Its nest.
• Who’s gloves are these?                       Whose gloves are these?

See if you can pick the correct answers:

1. It’s/its time to give the dog it’s/its bath.
2. Who’s/whose going to drive me to the mall?
3. It’s/its the most versatile ingredient to work with.
4. I don’t know who’s/whose dog this is.
5. It’s/its siding had blown off during the storm.
6. Who’s/whose cooking dinner?
7. The truck was missing it’s/its door.
8. Who’s/whose side are you on?
9. It’s/its okay to be confused.
10. An idea who’s/whose time has come.
11. The tree has lost all it’s/its leaves.

Answers:

1. It’s / its
2. Who’s
3. It’s
4. whose
5. Its
6. Who’s
7. its
8. whose
9. It’s
10. whose
11. its

Does this help clarify when to use it’s/who’s and its/whose?

Thank you for the suggestions so far. What other grammar topics would you like help with? Let me know in the comments!

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer, editor, journalist, and chocolate lover. She loves working with words and helps businesses with theirs. She writes fiction as Lisa Haselton, has an award-winning blog for book reviews and author interviews, and is on the staff of The Writer’s Chatroom where she gets to network with writing professionals on a weekly basis. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, Biznik, Facebook, and Twitter. 

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Grammar-ease: Then versus than

Last week’s post on the difference between “lay” and “lie” garnered a couple of suggestions for grammar topics, so here’s one: how to know when to use “then” and when to use “than.”

The two words can sound alike when used in conversation, which, I think, leads to most of the confusion.

Do you know which of these 2 sentences is correct?

• A. You reacted a lot more calmly then I would have.
• B. You reacted a lot more calmly than I would have.

How about which of these 2 sentences is correct?

• A. Apples are bigger then grapes.
• B. Apples are bigger than grapes.

And one more set. Which of these 2 sentences is correct?

• A. I bought a dress at Macy’s and then went to JC Penney’s for shoes.
• B. I bought a dress at Macy’s and than went to JC Penney’s for shoes.

Then refers to sequences in time. It tells when something happened.

• I washed the dishes, and then I dried the dishes, and then I put the dishes away.
• Finish your homework, then you can go out to play.
• The kitten tangled himself in the yarn, then jumped in the box.
• Once upon a time, boy met girl, fell in love, and then lived happily ever after.
• Until then, let’s stay where we are.

Than is a comparison word.

• I would rather watch this movie than exercise.
• Lilacs are more aromatic to me than lilies.
• Rather than walking on the beach, how about we cycle up the seacoast?
• Five is more than four.
• Cats are more independent than dogs.
• His writing is more formal than mine.

*Here’s a trick if you need a little more help:

When I need to pause to figure out usage as I’m writing, I remember “rather than,” because that turn of phrase sticks in my head and I know ‘than’ is to compare one thing to another. Or the phrase “and then and then and then” which I hear in my mind as a teenage girl’s voice telling me about her day, and it triggers ‘sequence’ for me.

**Or here’s another trick:

“Then” relates to “time” (both have an ‘e’). “Than” is a “comparison” (both have an ‘a’).

Did any of these suggestions help cement the different between then and than for you?

(Answers to the 3 pairings: B, B, A)

What other grammar topics would you like help with? Let me know in the comments!

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer, editor, journalist, and chocolate lover. She loves working with words and helps businesses with theirs. She writes fiction as Lisa Haselton, has an award-winning blog for book reviews and author interviews, and is on the staff of The Writer’s Chatroom where she gets to network with writing professionals on a weekly basis. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, Biznik, Facebook, and Twitter. 

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Grammar-ease: Lay versus Lie

I haven’t had a grammar post in a while, so here’s a new one!

A particularly challenging one for many people, the conundrum of lay versus lie. 

Lay is an active verb. A person picks up a book and lays it on a chair. A chicken lays an egg. (The person and chicken are active.)

Lie is a still verb. People lie on beds. Cats lie on people. Fleas lie on cats. (The people, cats, and fleas are still.)

——————————————————————————————————

Lay: to place or set something.

	Simple	Progressive	Perfect	Perfect progressive (action continues for a while)
Present	I layYou layHe/she/it laysThey lay	I am layingYou are layingShe is layingThey are laying	I have laidYou have laidShe has laidThey have laid	I have been layingYou have been layingShe has been layingThey have been laying
Past	I laidYou laidShe laidThey laid	I was layingYou were layingShe was layingThey were laying	I had laidYou had laidShe had laidThey had laid	I had been layingYou had been layingShe had been layingThey had been laying
Future	I will layYou will layShe will layThey will lay	I will be layingYou will be layingShe will be layingThey will be laying	I will have laidYou will have laidShe will have laidThey will have laid	I will have been layingYou will have been layingShe will have been layingThey will have been laying

——————————————————————————————-

Lie: to recline or repose somewhere.

	Simple	Progressive	Perfect	Perfect progressive (action continues for a while)
Present	I lieYou lieHe/she/it liesThey lie	I am lyingYou are lyingShe is lyingThey are lying	I have lainYou have lainShe has lainThey have lain	I have been lyingYou have been lyingShe has been lyingThey have been lying
Past	I layYou layShe layThey lay	I was lyingYou were lyingShe was lyingThey were lying	I had lainYou had lainShe had lainThey had lain	I had been lyingYou had been lyingShe had been lyingThey had been lying
Future	I will lieYou will lieShe will lieThey will lie	I will be lyingYou will be lyingShe will be lyingThey will be lying	I will have lainYou will have lainShe will have lainThey will have lain	I will have been lyingYou will have been lyingShe will have been lyingThey will have been lying

Here are some great tips to help remember the differences, from Painless Grammar, by Rebecca Elliott, Ph.D.:

• Think of to lay the same way as to say and to pay. We say (today)  ”I pay”, “I say,” (yesterday) “I paid”, “I said,” and “I have paid,” “I have said.” To lay works the same way: lay, laid, laid.
• Substitute the word place or put. If the sentence sounds right, you want lay; otherwise, you want lie. Is this okay?: You place the book on the table. Yes. Therefore, You lay the book on the table. How about this: You place in your bed at night. No. Therefore, You lie in your bed at night.
• My favorite: No one ever says that chickens lie eggs. Chickens are active and lay eggs, so visualize the action when you are writing about how you lay out a rug, or lay down your book.
• Lie is a quiet or still word. A fun ditty from the book: At night, I turn out my light and lie. (I’m going to lie down for a nap.) Whether it’s on a couch, beach blanket, or bed, if you are quietly reclining, you’re lying (not laying).

What do you think? Helpful?

If you have grammar topics you’d like to see covered, please leave a comment to let me know.

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer, editor, journalist, and chocolate lover. She loves working with words and helps businesses with theirs. She writes fiction as Lisa Haselton, has an award-winning blog for book reviews and author interviews, and is on the staff of The Writer’s Chatroom where she gets to network with writing professionals on a weekly basis. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, Biznik, Facebook, and Twitter. 

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More Concise Writing

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a short story in order to submit it to an anthology. I kept rewriting, trying to make the plot stronger, the characters more memorable, and the scenes more vivid. I didn’t pay attention to the word count.

Then, two weeks before the deadline, I thought the story was finished—it was as good as I could make it. That’s when I realized I had 2000 more words than allowed in the submission guidelines.

Oops.

I didn’t think I could cut 2000 words from a 7000 word story. That’s over 28% of the total story—gone.

Couldn’t be done. Or could it?

I’ve written before about the benefits of writing shorter and I started to see the 2000 words as a challenge. So I started going through the story and cutting unnecessary words—that got me about 500 words.

I went through it again. There was a description of a character in the beginning of my story that every reader commented on (positively). But, the character is minor, and never seen again. The second time through the manuscript, I considered deleting it but couldn’t quite make myself do it.

On the third pass, I cut it.

On the fourth pass, I cut an entire scene that didn’t really move the story forward. The fifth time through, I condensed a time sequence from two days into one. That saved me two paragraphs of transition scenes.

By then, I knew it was only a matter of time before I got below my word limit. I kept pruning and ended up with a completed story that (in my opinion) is stronger than the original story.

Until I went looking for unnecessary words, all the words in the entire document seemed vital. Unless pushed to cut words, I would have happily left all the redundant, weak, and otherwise less-than-stellar words and thought I was finished. I learned so much from this exercise.

One of the members of my critique group mentioned to me more than once that I could get rid of weak adverbs and adjectives by using stronger nouns and verbs. I didn’t really get it until I was looking for words to cut and changed “walked lightly” to “padded” and changed “walked swiftly” to “strode.” I saved two words there, but even more importantly, I created a more vibrant image in the mind of my reader (hopefully).

I found rewriting this story to be very rewarding and cutting it by 28% even more satisfying that the original rewrite.

Next time I write a story, I know I’ll incorporate some of the things I learned with this rewrite, so hopefully I won’t need to cut 28% of every story I write, but I do know that cutting unnecessary words will be a final step before I submit anything in the future.

How about you? Do you tighten your prose as you go, or leave it ‘til the end?

Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a full-time mother, part-time life coach, and part-time writer. I’m enjoying learning more about writing every time I sit down at the desk, and one of the most important things I’m learning is that I have to allow myself to make mistakes. If it has to be perfect, then I’ll never get anything down on the page. So I choose imperfection as I know that’s the only way I can keep improving.

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Different ways to get your story started

Writers (of fiction, non-fiction, online, print, and so on) know that beginnings are important. Without the right beginning, the chance for retaining a reader declines rapidly.

So, what type of beginning is best? There’s no perfect answer, of course, but do you have a habit of starting stories, articles, or blog posts the same way? If so, or if you’re unsure, now is a good time to evaluate your writing and see if there’s a way to refresh your beginnings.

Exercise: Pull out a few stories, articles, or blog posts you’ve written recently. Note how you started them. Did they start with the same part of speech? Do you lean on nouns, verbs, pronouns, or adjectives every time?

If not, you already have variety in your beginnings. Bravo!

But if you notice a tendency to open with a certain part of speech  (I favor starting with ‘The’), consider trying something new with the next piece you write.

Here are some examples of ways to start a sentence:

• Adjective – Bright lights can show more than you want seen.
• Article – The best way to manage your time is to schedule it.
• Adverb – Sometimes clients know what they want, but not what they need.
• Conjunction – But you may not find the answers if you don’t ask the questions.
• Gerund - Crossing your arms is a sign of disagreement.
• Noun - Jess made her way to the stage to accept her award.
• Preposition - On the ropes, the boxer glanced at his girlfriend and winked.
• Pronoun - She bought the antique clock after taking its measurements.
• Verb - Start now and celebrate the milestones.

Practice opening your sentences in different ways to see if anything new works for you.

Give it a shot, there’s nothing to lose, and only refreshed writing to gain.

Lisa J. Jackson loves working with words in her own work and with businesses. She also loves New Hampshire and is focused on completing several 5Ks in 2013 as a way to get off the couch consistently. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, Biznik, Facebook, and Twitter. 

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Strong Words

This is a guest post by my friend and fellow writer, Sylvie Kurtz. She’s a published author and a writing teacher. Enjoy!

One of the top ten beginning students’ mistakes I see is the use of weak words to get a story across. I’m not sure if it comes from the advice I often hear from teachers to write as if you were telling the story to your best friend.

So let’s say you’re out jogging and you see a man and a dog. You saw them with your eyes, so you have a clear picture in your mind of the man and the dog. When you sit across the kitchen table and tell your friend about what you saw, the conversation might go something like this:

“I saw this guy walking with this dog and—”

“What did the guy look like?” the friend asks.

“Like a thug.”

“What kind of dog?”

“You know, one of those mean ones. A Rottweiler.”

So you fill in the sketch in her mind and soon her mind picture might look similar to yours.

The problem is that a reader can’t knock on your door and say, “Hey, by the way, what kind of dog was it?”

When you write, all the reader can see in her mind is what’s on the page. Yes, given enough details, the brain will fill in the scene, but you have to give enough seed impressions to start that concrete and specific picture building.

Let’s take that man walking that dog again and create a more vibrant sentence.

He walked with his dog. Nothing wrong with this sentence. Nothing wrong with walk. It’s an active verb. He and dog are kind of blurry though. I’m not seeing anything but silhouettes.

You’re missing three chances to create a more vivid mind picture for your reader.

He strolled along the sidewalk with a Jack Russell terrier ahead of him, tugging at the leash. Here you get the sense of someone not being in a hurry and a small dog full of energy. So now the dog and the manner of walking are clearer, but he’s still gray.

The man’s spine curbed with age and his plodding gait matched that of the golden retriever at his side. The pace here is slower and both the man and the dog give a different emotional impression.

A guy his age should’ve been working at some nine-to-five job, not striding the quiet streets of the suburbs at ten in the morning wearing a hoodie and fighting the pitbull, prancing and growling at his side. This creates a completely different picture, one that might raise suspicion.

The writer’s foremost tool is the words he uses to generate pictures that will allow the reader to experience the scene. That experience strikes an emotional cord in the reader and that emotion is the unconscious reason why a reader reads.

What do you want your reader to feel as she reads your scene? What concrete and specific words can pop up an image that’s colorful enough to give her that feeling?

Strong words cause strong pictures to fire into the brain and those strong images create emotions. It’s like taking a reader’s hand and saying, “Come along with me. I’ll give you a ride you’ll remember.”

Sylvie Kurtz (www.sylviekurtz.com) writes adventures that explore the complexityof the human mind and the thrill of suspense. She likes dark chocolate, soft wool, and sappy movies.

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Seven Ways to Write Better Stories by Failing – a guest post by John Yeoman

Seven Ways to Write Better Stories by Failing

a guest post by John Yeoman

Help! They’ll hate my story. I can hear them now. ‘It’s lovely and so… you!’ Yes, they hate it.

Even if they say they don’t, can we believe them? At least, the verdict we get from an agent or competition judge will be honest. But honesty is cruel. No wonder new writers shudder when entering a major contest.

Since 2009, many of the 3500+ contestants in the Writers’ Village fiction award have asked me ‘Please be kind!’ Their terror is real. Why? If readers reject our story, they stamp on our soul.

Here are seven defences against the terror of rejection.

1. Join the club!

Virtually all authors who have left an enduring legacy were scorned in their debut years. It took Agatha Christie 23 attempts to get her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles into print. Every publisher in London laughed at William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies.

Tell yourself ‘early rejection is the sign of fame to come’. Logical? No, but often true.

2. Blink away the fairy dust.

Few novels get published today by writers who want to ‘express themselves’ or ‘write their lives’. If you set out to write solely for yourself you will write garbage. Write what the market wants then you can be as individual, within those constraints, as you wish.

Salman Rushdie didn’t start by writing Literature. He honed his skills as a copywriter for the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. Only then was he qualified to embark on Midnight’s Children, which won the 1981 Booker Prize.

Be realistic about what publishers today will publish.

3. Welcome rejection as a free lesson.

A failed story is a great story if it teaches us something about our craft. If our writing hasn’t succeeded yet, it’s because we haven’t failed enough. What’s more, early success is dangerous. Next time, our novel might not earn out its advance. And our confidence collapses.

But if we have lived with failure for seven years, we sigh. We carry on. It goes with the territory.

4. Know the odds – and play the game regardless.

Can pessimism be a positive emotion? Yes, if it encourages us to persist against the odds. And the odds of a new writer being accepted by a reputable agent are around one in 2500, or so a top agent Luigi Bonomi once told me.

Accept the odds and soldier on.

5. Start with low-risk projects.

Don’t embark on a novel from day one. Chances are, you won’t finish it. Learn your craft with short stories. That’s how Joyce and Hemingway did it. Enter them systematically in short fiction contests. In each one, try out a new technique.

Soon you’ll get a feel for what judges look for – and agents too. Every submission teaches you a new craft skill.

6. Be content with small successes en route to stardom.

When you do embark upon that novel, agents will be genuinely impressed if you’ve won a dozen major awards. Your first paragraph might actually get read. But if a story fails to impress a contest judge, improve and submit it elsewhere. Eventually it will win, because every submission has refined your  skills.

7. Keep yourself motivated by reading the latest best sellers.

Stephen King once gave this advice to newbie writers: ‘Read the latest best seller. Then ask yourself “How come this garbage was even published?”’ With some notable exceptions, popular novels are not distinguished by literary talent. Only by the persistence of their authors.

Those authors succeeded because they learnt, early on, that Failure is a Good Thing. But persistence is better.

John Yeoman

Dr. John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, judges the Writers’ Village story competition and is a tutor in creative writing at a UK university. He has been a successful commercial author for 42 years. You can find a wealth of ideas for writing stories that sell in his free 14-part course at:

http://www.writers-village.org/story-course

cwriting@btinternet.com

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Something from a Writer’s Prompt

I don’t think we’ve had many writing prompts on this blog (and maybe we should consider having a prompt on a regular basis.)

I love prompts mostly because I like to figure out a way to approach a story from a completely different point of view.

Writing Prompt -  a boy and a girl are in the park. The boy is holding a box with something in it that he is going to give the girl – what happens?

If you say that the boy is going to propose to the girl and give her an engagement ring, I swear I’ll just puke.

But, if you say that the the boy has a vial of harvested cells from his newborn baby brother’s umbilical cord that he has smuggled out of the hospital to give the girl so that she can use them in stem-cell therapy in order to live. And when she does live she wants to marry him but wait a minute, she has some of his brothers cells in her, does that make them related? Is she partly now his  brother? Would they be able to get over that situation to live their lives together? Oh and by the way, the younger brother was tragically killed and when the mother finds out that he “lives on” in the girl, she insists that the girl become a member of the family and is invited to Sunday dinners for the rest of time further complicating the lovers’ relationship.

All from a box in the park.

So go ahead, give it a try.

Here’s a photo with some objects, use some or all of them and in the comments below, tell me what would happen in your writer’s world.

***

Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.

Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com)

No hints on this one.

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Getting the details right – mixing personal experience with historical facts

When writing for newspapers, magazines, or other non-fiction market, it’s important to get the details right. I hope that’s not a surprise.

I’m currently working on a destination piece for a regional magazine. This particular piece is a mix of my personal experience and history I’ve learned about the location. The goal is to draw people in and inspire them to visit, or at least be aware of a place they hadn’t known about before.

I’ve lived in this a wonderful little town in New Hampshire for a year now. Before that, I had driven through a few times and hiked here before, but I wasn’t aware of the history. There is a lot (of course), and it is enthralling me more every day. I’m thrilled to be writing about even this one small aspect of the town.

The Uncanoonuc Mountains, Goffstown, NH

The article has a 1,000 word cap. It has to include my personal story and some history.

When I need to research a place, I start with the historical society and local library.  If neither of those places have what I need, they usually have recommendations. Newspaper archives are also fantastic and research librarians make the searching easy.

Of course, the Internet is full of information – but it has to be vetted as having correct facts, and that takes time.

So, for Internet research:

• I start with a general search on the topic and hone the search as I find more information.
• I create a folder in my Favorites and save relevant websites to that folder so I don’t lose them (it took me a long time to come to this method!) When finding a Web page of interest, I save it right away. *Most* pages will allow you to ‘go back’, but sometimes they don’t. And there’s nothing more frustrating than finding a page with several links, knowing it’s going to be a resource, clicking on one of those links, and then not being able to ‘go back’ to that first page.
• I do my best to track information I find online back to a solid resource – a book, newspaper, or person, otherwise I’m leery to use it.

Getting quotes from real people also helps with a non-fiction piece. Any subject matter expert, whether they call themselves that or insist, “I just grew up and remember, I’m no expert,” are fabulous. Direct quotes from a couple of people make the piece more conversational and appealing to the reader.

Important: Keep track of all the details and give credit where it is due. I’ve obtained a lot of photos from my local historical society and if the magazine uses them, the historical society needs to be acknowledged. For quotes, first and last name, and town are relevant.

South Uncanoonuc – remnants of former train track up 33 degree incline

And your personal experience, if the piece calls for it, is what all the details of the article should be wrapped in. For this particular article, I went to part of the historic site and took photos of remnants that still exist today. They’ll complement the images I have from the historical society.

These articles – the ones where I can participate today and learn about yesterday – are my favorites.

What methods or resources do you use when writing non-fiction?

 

Lisa J. Jackson is a New England-region journalist and a year-round chocolate and iced coffee lover. She loves writing about New Hampshire for local papers or regional magazines, like New Hampshire ToDo.  She writes fiction as Lisa Haselton, has an award-winning blog for book reviews and author interviews, and is on the staff of The Writer’s Chatroom. Connect with her on Facebook or Twitter. 

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A Presidential reason to write

I’m in that writing pact that Julie talked about a few days ago. We are trying to get our manuscripts done by the end of August otherwise we have to write a check to the *other* presidential political campaign.

It’s impossible, it can’t be done, there’s just not enough time.

And yet, because of this agreement, you’ll find me spending my evenings writing simply because I do not want to write that check. It started off as a joke (what’s the worst punishment you can think of if you lose) but Julie and I have somehow managed to stumble on some incredibly strong motivation that is really spurring me on.

Each night, I bring my computer and take 1 or 2 of my girls, (who are under strict orders not to bother me) and we spend a few hours at our local library. The girls play on the library’s computers while I park myself at a cubicle and write, write, write.

And guess what? Something amazing is happening. Progress, real progress is being made on my book. Each evening when I pack up to leave, I’ve noticed that my page count is that much higher than when I arrived. It’s kind of amazing.

Who knew that a Presidential campaign would finally give me a legitimate reason to write?

Trust me, I know, it’s always easier to say that there are priorities that come before your writing than it is to actually sit down and write. There is always, always something else that needs to be done, right?   

But guess what? Giving your writing a valid reason to be done, makes it appear to be valuable work to other people. The Presidential campaign is what is finally doing it for me.

My kids are not whining because I’m spending a few hours away from home writing each night, instead they are cheering me on. They don’t want me to lose.

And neither do, I which is why if you need me, you’ll be able to find me at the library tonight working on my manuscript.

What’s the reason you have that gives you permission to write?

***

Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.

Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com)

I’ll be in the back corner, bring cookies.

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