Response to Grammar Girl

The Grammar Girl website is AWESOME!! Not!! I never thought there was so much stuff out there on the internet about writing and grammar. Guess I was wrong, and the host of the site is undoubtedly much smarter than me, so as stated by me earlier, my hat’s off to her.

After listening to the Grammar Girl podcast while following along with the written copy, it became clear that without realizing it, I often apply some of the techniques she described when reviewing my own work. I guess I’m lucky today, I had an epiphany. I had no idea these were actual "techniques" applied by the professionals out there.

One technique that I almost always use is to print a hard copy of my draft to use for review. When I do so, I almost always read it aloud. For some reason, this always helps me to hear how the piece flows, and let’s me determine if it sounds like it will make sense to someone attempting to read it. Additionally, I have found that the fewer distractions I have around me, the better I can concentrate on the task at hand. If I turn off all devices that produce unnecessary noises such as the TV or radio, I am better able to draft and proofread my own material.

Today I went back and reviewed some of my previous blog posts that I have not paid much attention to since their inception, and found a few issues. What became clear really quick, was that time away from your writing can have a major impact on the end result of your project. When reading one of the posts backwards (as awkward as this was) I did identify a few mistakes, most related to comma placement. I then read another posting aloud from start to finish, and identified a couple of mechanical things with sentences, that while not wrong per se, could have flowed much better had I changed some of the verbiage. All in all things didn’t appear too bad; in my humble, but, accurate opinion.