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Commas are used around antitheticals. Learn what those are and the exceptions to the rule.

Marketing a book can be tough, but if you become a white hat pirate, it will be a cinch. Follow these 17 tips teaching you how to become a book marketing pirate and sell more books today.

Client management doesn’t need to be stressful and time-consuming. Create clear systems and processes and you’ll feel on top of your client relationships in no time.

No more forgetting to send a client a message, no more wondering where you put their information … Instead, create your repeatable processes and stick to them.

Your main character(s) can make or break your book, so it is worth the time to get it right. Learn how to create a compelling character that will keep your reader turning the pages.

A misplaced modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that is separated from the word it describes. Learn how to spot them and fix them to avoid confusion and unintended humor.

Too many boring nonfiction books exist. Don’t add to the pile. Instead, write a good nonfiction by making your book more reader friendly, using these tips.

Bookkeeping and filing taxes don’t need to be stressful. Create clear systems and processes and you’ll feel on top of your finances in no time.

No stuffing receipts or invoices into a drawer or digital file. Instead create your repeatable processes and stick to them.

Self-help is an oversaturated market so your book may flop, but it also has a built-in audience, which can help your book soar—if you write a good one that is. So learn 6 tips for writing an effective self-help book that will reach audiences and do well.

While you may know when to use commas with coordinating conjunctions, when the conjunction is interrupted with a phrase or clause, comma placement can be tricky. Learn this more advanced comma rule and be in the know.

Save money on your editor and learn to edit for the most common word- and sentence-level issues in fiction. You will learn to be a better writer for having gone through this process and you will save money.

Email templates can save you a lot of time spent emailing so learn how to create them and what templates you may want to create for your editorial business. This blog also contains free email templates for you to download and modify.

When the organization of your nonfiction book is random and ideas seem disjointed, it impedes flow and makes it harder to follow your ideas. Even if your ideas themselves are clear, the lack of organization can muddle them. So learn how to determine chapter order, use headings and subheadings, and write effective transitions.

Commas can be tricky. Learn when you do and when you don’t use a comma with participial phrases.

Readers want to know your characters even in a plot-driven story. They don’t have to like your characters, but they have to know your characters. So how do you make this happen? By revealing character interiority. Without effective interiority, you hold your readers back from really engaging and immersing themselves in your story. Learn all about one of the secrets to a compelling novel, interiority: what it is and how to use it effectively.

Editing is a cognitively demanding skill, and with so much to think about, it is easy to overlook tasks to do and edits to look for. Checklists keep you organized and on track. Learn the power of checklists and how to create and use them.

Crime novelists need to make sure they get the details right when it comes to police work. So in this blog, learn the steps the police go through once a theft is reported to find the criminal and charge them with larceny, burglary, and/or robbery. And as a bonus, learn how to spice up detective work, so it isn’t too boring.

Whether you put punctuation inside or outside quotation marks depends on the punctuation and which regional rules you are following. Learn which punctuation marks go inside, which ones go outside, and which ones sometimes go in and sometimes out in US English.

Free indirect speech is a powerful tool when writing in third person. It gives you the intimacy of first person but with the flexibility of third person. Learn what it is and why you want to use this tool.

Self-publishing is not for the faint of heart. Because there are a lot of steps in the process, it can be a steep learning curve. Learn how to do each step well and the supporting help available to aid you in your journey.

If you are confident you can’t end a sentence with a preposition, shouldn’t split an infinitive, never should use the passive voice, and more, then, I have news for you: your English teacher may have led you astray.Let’s put those so-called grammar rules to rest, like the zombies they are.

“Show, don’t tell” is popular writing advice, but it can be tricky to understand what it really means. Telling is not always bad. But when it takes the reader out of an immersive experience or seems dry, you want to revise to show, don’t tell. This blog shows you how to do that in a variety of ways with clear examples.

Capitalizing words in titles and headings follows a set of style rules. It isn't as simple as capitalize the "big" words and lowercase the "small" words. This blog will walk you through those rules with clear examples.

Apostrophes help form the genitive, possessive, form, and while it seems straightforward to add an apostrophe to make a noun possessive, many of the rules are nuanced or misunderstood, so it's good to clarify. Learn when to use the apostrophe and s versus just the apostrophe and how to handle joint possession and gerunds.

While writing is highly subjective, some objective guidelines for good writing exist. For one, if you start too many sentences in a row with the same pattern (not necessarily the same word), your passage can sound monotonous or choppy. This isn't always the case. But it is a general objective guideline that good writing entails varying your sentence beginnings. Learn the various patterns for starting a sentence and when it's fine to have several in a row start the same way and when a rewrite may be in order. 

While double quotation marks have a lot of functions, in US English single quotation marks are only used in a few instances. Learn when to use single quotation marks effectively. 

In part one, I discussed the first point of frustration […]

Rule #1: Place a pair of quotation marks around direct […]

Narrative distance is the distance between the reader and the […]

The Rules: Comma goes on both sides of the state […]

While editors strive to do their best, it isn't realistic to expect perfection. So you will still find errors, but just know that some of those "errors" you found aren't actual errors. This blog discusses these issues and your options. 

A comma goes after introductions before the main independent clause. Learn 6 types of introductions and how to punctuate them.

Many authors hit marketing hard during launch, but then stop. Learn eight strategies you can use to continue to market your book post-publication.

“Show, don’t tell” is often repeated advice. This advice can […]

The Rule: Use a comma before relative clauses when they […]

You’re excited and nervous to get your manuscript back from […]

What Is an En Dash: An en dash (–) is […]

Using these strategies, you can learn to write more concise, powerful sentences. Learn how to get rid of unnecessary wordiness through a variety of strategies.

The Rule: You can opt to place a colon between […]

Action beats reveal a character’s movement, emotions, and motivations; affect the rhythm and tension of the scene; and can establish the setting. Learn how to write effective action beats and use them purposefully. 

The Rule: Place a colon before the list if the […]

If you can afford full editing services, you should do so. With that said, the more thoroughly you do self-editing, the less your full service editing services will cost you. This blog outlines five self-editing tasks you can do to reduce your editing costs.

The Rules: No comma between just month and year. Comma […]

General thoughts on the semicolon: For some reason unbeknownst to […]

On the road to publishing a manuscript, finishing the editing […]

The Rule: Place a comma on both sides of the […]

Editing is expensive, but it helps if you understand the reason behind the cost. This blog explains why you aren't being ripped off and why paying rock-bottom rates may not be a good idea. It also outlines various ways you can save on the cost of editing if you have budget restraints.

Increase your book sales by creating an author newsletter. This blog walks you through 6 steps to building your newsletter and growing your audience.

The Rule: Since a direct address is a type of […]

Authors often include unnecessary explanations, which can annoy and frustrate readers. Trust your readers to follow your plot and your characters' development without explanations. This blog discusses five types of unnecessary explanations and gives examples so you can avoid overexplaining your novel's plot and characters.

This tutorial walks authors through the process of creating their own style sheets. At the end of the blog, I have included some free downloadable style sheet templates.

General Thoughts on the Semicolon: For some reason unbeknownst to […]

What It Is A style sheet tracks punctuation and style […]

The Rule*: Place a comma after a dependent clause when […]

The Rule*: Place a comma between independent clauses when they […]

Before starting the editing process, it helps to know what to expect from your editor. Having realistic expectations sets you up for a sucessful author-editor relationship.

The Rule*: Use a comma in between coordinate adjectives; do […]

What Is Info Dumping? Info dumping, dumping a chunk of […]

Head-hopping is an easy trap to fall into. If you head-hop, it can pull your reader out of the scene and leave them feeling disoriented. So learn what it is, how it differs from an omniscient narrator, how to avoid it, and how to correct it if you do spot it. 

If too many of your sentences start the same way, your writing can begin to sound choppy and monotonous. This article explains how to vary your sentence beginning sand how to know when to do so.

Knowing and using correct punctuation is useful. This blog posts teaches a basic grammar principle: using commas with coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS). Learn when to put a comma before "and," "for," "nor," "but," "or," "yet," and "so" and when you don't need the comma. 

As an author, you have full control of the final […]

Dialogue reveals character and moves the action along, but poorly written dialogue can have the opposite effect. This article explains how to avoid common dialogue mistakes, when to use internal dialogue, and gives examples of good and bad dialogue.

Many writers tend to overuse "be" verbs. While we need these words, strong writers often reword sentences to eliminate them, choosing powerful verbs instead. This article provides specific methods to eliminate them. Read and apply these strategies to strengthen your writing.

When writing dialogue tags, authors often fall into these common pitfalls. Avoiding these pitfalls will strengthen your dialogue tags, improving the pacing and characterization. So read this blog to discover how you can avoid these pitfalls and write better dialogue tags today.

Editing is essentially broken into four levels. This article will help you make an informed decision on the levels of editing you need, regardless of the term being used, and what to budget for your project.  Click here to learn what type of editing you may need and what to expect to pay for it.

Because I value preciseness and organization, I have separated thesis […]

This article will help you see how an editor works with you to make your material the best it can be in the time available. Understanding this will help you have realistic expectations and a better collaborative experience.

When writing an essay or a nonfiction book, it is important to have transitions connecting your topics together. This blog post describes how to do that in easy to follow steps, and then provides examples from essays and nonfiction books.

What Is a Thesis Statement? Every paper you write—expository, analytical, […]

Purpose of a Career Summary A career summary should: describe […]

People often say "good" when they mean "well," and grammar nazis often correct people who are actually using the right one. Learn which word to use.

While I don’t necessarily advocate for formulaic writing or the […]

Why You Have to Show Instead of Tell Sadly, you […]