Polishing the PUGS

Some fiction writers imagine great stories just waiting to transform into a novel. Some nonfiction writers have researched amazing facts they wish to compile into a book or magazine article. The problem is, both types of writers get bogged down with the basics of writing, or what my editor friend Kathy Ide calls the PUGS–punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling.

• Punctuation. The 14 most common English punctuation marks are the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, hyphen, parentheses, brackets, braces, apostrophe, quotation marks, and ellipsis. Learning how to use them correctly will make it easier for readers to understand and enjoy your writing.
• Usage. Usage is often confused with Grammar. According to a post on the Merriam-Webster blog, Usage is “the way in which words and phrases are actually used (as in a particular form or sense) in a language community.”
• Grammar. Wikipedia defines grammar as “the study of words, how they are used in sentences, and how they change in different situations.” It’s basically a set of rules on how a language should be used.
• Spelling. Spelling is simply “the forming of words from letters according to accepted usage” (Merriam-Webster).

In order for content to be compelling, writers must master these writing principles. I’m not going to go over them in detail here, but if you are one of those writers who struggle with punctuation, usage, grammar, or spelling, I encourage you to visit Kathy’s website. She gives some great free tips.

If you know you need some good help in these areas or have become frustrated because grasping the “rules” of writing has held you back from your writing dreams, you may wish to purchase Kathy’s book, Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors.

You may also wish to install the free Grammarly tool on your website browser. There is a paid version, but for most writers, the free version does a great job. Grammarly is pretty intuitive, but it cannot (and should not) replace good old-fashioned proofreading. Make sure you give your writing a good look before publishing blog posts or submitting manuscripts.

In the next post, we’ll discuss Resisting the Urge to Explain, or RUE.

Until next time,
Happy Writing!

(The posts in this series are tagged Creating Compelling Content.)