Grammar Friendly Foe?

To be entirely honest, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with grammar. I love it in that it really helps clarify what is being said or written. However, with the growth of online writing and messaging rather than writing letters new structures of language emerge. Which isn’t really a beast to get into here, at least not in this post but it’s important to note in any discussion with grammar.

Okay so why the love-hate relationship? I love grammar when it applies to the order of words necessary in a sentence or general sentence structure. I also love to throw sentence structure out the window in more poetry like writing styles.

What I don’t care for is the punctuation rules. For the life of me I still don’t really know the difference between ; and :. Also the rules around commas… I don’t get it and truthfully using apps like Grammarly only confused me on what I kinda remembered from English class. For example with dialogue in writing. When does one use a period instead of a comma? Or vice versa?

I thought the rule went if it was a complete thought or a complete sentence or more than one thought it would be a period, otherwise it was a comma. That’s not the rule. Although, I’ve tried different grammar sites and they haven’t corrected that mistake.

The rule follows that if there is a dialogue tag then there must be a comma. Unless it’s a question or exclamation mark. Of course that is only if the dialogue tag follows the dialogue. At least that’s the general rule.

Grammar is my go to starting place for editing. I usually use a couple grammar sites or programs to make it more efficient. Then I print off sections and go through with my red pen. I try to stick to grammar but if I notice a glaring story or plot point that stands out I’ll note it too.

So where do you start with editing?