welcome to thi 3rd editiok ofhow to author? im so excited for this wan because......ah...this...is...such...a terrible,and hard oargergeh to write. Speaking of which)yesterday.mysister said"i loveyour advice book!!!!!!!!!!!. I'm goingto stap now because my fingers:they feel like theyre been choppd off just by typin this,

▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬

Ohmysweetchocolates, I almost killed my brain there!

Brain? You okay in there?

Testing the brain: one, two. . .

Okay, I'm fine. Cool.

Thank the gods of brains.

*Clears throat and adjusts sitting position*

Ahem. Okay, let's start with what's wrong with my welcome note.

EVERYTHING!

0/1000 in punctuation and 0/1000 in grammar! Total fail!

But, this is based on my opinion, so maybe I'm being biased. Raise your hand if you love LOVE LOVED the bombastic errors in that terrible (totally not my writing style. I promise my stuff is good, I try) welcome note.

Now, since we've set up this foundation, I'm sure we can all agree that grammar and punctuation are the angels of redemption because they help us understand a piece. They help us tell the story. They help us, the readers understand what the heck is going on.

Back to the horrifying example I gave;

*Rewind noises*

welcome to thi 3rd editiok ofhow to author? im so excited for this wan because......ah...this...is...such...a terrible,and hard oargergeh to write. Speaking of which)yesterday.mysister said"i loveyour advice book!!!!!!!!!!!. I'm goingto stap now because my fingers:they feel like theyre been choppd off just by typin this,

(Before you go further, tell me what you found wrong with this paragraph. Then when you're done, you can compare your comment with mine to know your grammar knowledge level against a pro.

I'm the "pro" by the way. *Covers nose* tee-hee.)

That's a joke. I'm not. I just try my best. I'm sure some of you must have spotted some typos by now (#I-writie-on-my-phone. #itshellIknow)

Anyways, this activity is for you to know the areas of Grammar you don't know about and where you can improve. Darl, I'll be checking your comments, I also want to improve.

Okay. Welcome to . . .

THE PROBLEMS WITH AOFUNKE'S WELCOME NOTE!

1.) First off, man, whoever wrote this(certainly not me in my right senses) has a problem with CAPITALIZATION. And that's where we're gonna start.

When do you use capital letters?

-On the first letter of the first word at the beginning of a paragraph. (A paragraph is a group of sentences that support a basic topic or sentence (called the topic sentence)).

Eg:

The girls stared at Ngozi, each squinting their eyes at the feeble-looking girl. A common thought lay in their hearts: one about how much they hated her guts.

*If this example isn't clear enough, you can ask a question here>

-On the first letter of the first word after a full stop(.).

E.g

The girls stared at Ngozi, each squinting their eyes at the feeble-looking girl. A common thought lay in their hearts: one about how much they hated her guts.

*If this example isn't clear enough, you can ask a question here>

-On the first letter of a proper noun (including names of persons.) A compound noun are nouns that represent a particular object, person, place, etc. For example; Gold, Silver, Freddy. Something that pertains to a particular entity.

The opposite of proper nouns are compound nouns which are nouns that represent a group of entities. Eg; school, broom, feet, door, jacket, etc. Something that raises the question "which door?", "what jacket?", "which one?".

Thus, it will be wrong to say,

"I go to School everyday with chelsea."

What's right is,

"I go to school everyday with Chelsea."

*Questions? Leave them here>

Do not capitalize;

Compound nouns or other parts of speech which don't start a sentence, the entire word(I think this is professionally wrong because I haven't seen any published that does this. *I'll explain more when we talk about crazy punctuation.)

Speech tags. Eg;

Maya said(probed, cried, choked out, sputtered), "maybe I should go."

Did I forget anything? Inform me in the comments!

2.) My guys, the SPELLING makes me wanna stab my liver.

When I'd just began writing my first book on Wattpad, passionate heart, (you're never going to find this book because I deleted it's existence from life. No one deserves the tortures of the grammatical errors in that book.) I didn't see spelling as important. I was posting whatever.

What's worse? I was using a mobile device, still am(if you're like me, kudos! You're a survivor, b).

If you have a laptop or desktop, or projector screen, whatever, and you still can't proofread your thing, please stop. You're chasing away potential readers.

Okay, back to my story . . .

I used to post whatever. There were typos everywhere, the plot was all over the place. Reading the physical copy now, the one I wrote with my hand, I feel like punching thirteen year old me.

Proofread your stuff!

Proofread it at least a little before posting because no one wants to read a book they can't understand. Spelling errors make readers confused and make me want to jump into a pool of holy water for grammatical cleansing.

Please darlings, okay? Okay!

*Try correcting the spelling errors in the paragraph:

welcome to thi 3rd editiok ofhow to author? im so excited for this wan because......ah...this...is...such...a terrible,and hard oargergeh to write. Speaking of which)yesterday.mysister said"i loveyour advice book!!!!!!!!!!!. I'm goingto stap now because my fingers:they feel like theyre been choppd off just by typin this,

3.) NUMBERS. Hmm . . .

I don't think many people know this, but you're not supposed to use numbers in your text. It's wrong, bad. Like what the flip are you doing, officer?

This isn't mathematics!

#favsubjectbtw

I could live in a maths textbook all day. *Sigh*

Not the point!

3rd" should be "third". That's just a few extra characters. See? Not so much trouble.

*Questions anyone?

4.) Now, let's talk about PUNCTUATION!

*Audience boos*

Hey! Don't boo me . . .

And someone get me a cup of warm tea. This is a big one.

Alright. Since I'm not some grammatical expert, (I'm a med student. Have mercy!) I'm gonna cut these rules into dos and don'ts.

The DOS OF PUNCTUATION!

•After a full stop(.) or comma(,), a space follows before the next word.

Eg:

The girl walked forward. She fell down.

The girl walked forward, before falling down.

•Use full stops to end sentences, not commas or ellipses(...)

The girl walked forward.

•Ellipses are made by putting three dots together (...) Sometimes, for stylist purposes, people out spaces between the dots (. . .).

Ellipses should be used to indicate fading to silence of a statement.

"I might come home or..."

•After closing quotation marks(”, sometimes ") leave a space before the next word.

"I might come home or not." Maya bowed her head as she said the words.

Full stops come before the closing quotation marks, not after. (Refer to above example).

How to use speech tags.

Before the statement:

Maya said, "I might come home."

After statement:

"I might come home," said Maya.

"I might come home," Maya said.

•Colons(:) are used to show related sentences. They are used to separate run-on sentences.

Arya hated the shirt: it was green.

•One exclamation mark is enough to show the exclamation, no matter the degree. Use tags to show higher exclamations if need be. (Hey! That rhymed!)

Get out!

Don't go there!

•Short forms are expressed using an apostrophe (')

Do not-Don't

They are-They're

You are-You're

It is-it's

Coming-Comin' (for accents)

If you don't put an apostrophe between "it" and "s", it becomes "its" which is a pronoun showing possession. Like her, hers, his.

Her pen. Its skirt.

Not "it's skirt" (here you're saying it is skirt—which makes zero sense)

The DON'TS OF PUNCTUATION!

DON'T;

Use more than one exclamation mark.

Use more than three dots in an ellipse.

Use ellipses to end sentences.

Use Commas to end sentences.

Neglect the importance of word spacing.

Place a full stop after the closing quotation marks.

Use ellipses in the middle of a sentence when tone is not fading away.

Have a chocolate 🍫: remember that terrible paragraph at the top? Make some corrections and see how good you can make it. You could even leave a comment showing us your corrections.

And that's a wrap!

If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment down below. Who knows? I could dedicate an entire chapter to your topic!