Month: August 2019

When I’m editing, this makes my top 5 search and destroy list. And Trinis love capitals. We use them to make things sound exciting. “He had a Heart Attack!” “Our Furniture is Half-Off!” Arbitrary capitals hurt my eyes!

We use them as a gesture of respect: “My Mom is a Doctor.” No, honey, your mom is a doctor. It’s just a profession. No capital needed. You can, however, say, “Doctor Bennet is my mother.” Because then you’re using her professional designation as a title.

Also, did ya see how I didn’t use a capital letter on ‘mom’? When you’re referring to someone in the third person, you don’t say “my Mom”. You use lower case letters. “My mom” or “my dad”.

When you’re speaking to them, however, it’s all good. Say, “Mom, did you make dinner yet?” or, even better, “Mom, we made dinner!”

What do you think? Leave a comment and let’s talk.

Or ‘but’. Or ‘so’. Or any number of co-ordinating conjunctions that join two sentences. You know what else I want to start a sentence with? ‘Bite me’. Well, to be honest, that’s a complete sentence, but you get my drift.

There is nothing wrong with starting a sentence with any of these words, including or,
nor, for, so, and yet. It used to drive me batshit when editors went at my novels with hammer and tongs and started shredding my story, all to satisfy some mythical ‘rule’ that doesn’t exist.

When we were in primary school the teachers taught us that these words could only join sentences, for example: “You’re ugly, but I totally like you anyway,” or “Roslyn Carrington is the greatest writer of her generation, and damned if she isn’t horrendously underpaid.”

That was their way of teaching you to write complete sentences, and helping you stop writing phrases thinking they were full sentences. In other words, it was like rubbing aloes on your fingertips to stop you from biting your nails.

But, now that we’re all grown up, let’s recognise that we don’t need these training wheels for our sentences anymore. Your sentence will trot happily along if you start it with a conjunction, and the grammar police won’t put you in shackles.

And to quote Forrest Gump, that’s all I got to say about that.

Comments? Questions? Leave ‘em below.

So named because of its shy and retiring nature, and its penchant for hiding under toilet seats. If you are reclusive, it means you avoid social interaction.

But I heard on the news an official saying he was “reclusing” himself from certain proceedings. No, good sir, you are “recusing” yourself. This means you are voluntarily withdrawing from a matter because of circumstances which could impact upon your impartiality, like a judge presiding upon her child’s court case, or a surgeon operating on his wife.

So, recluse = that weird, sorta smelly fella living 3 houses down, who has no friends and never says good morning to anybody.

Recuse = doing the honourable thing, removing yourself on principle, a rarity in politics, but let’s not go there!

And by the way: 1) “recluse” is not a verb, and 2) a brown recluse spider probably can kill you, but most of the time it’ll just leave you wishing you were dead.

Easy. A fugu fish will kill you if you bite it, and a mapepire will kill you if it bites you.

There’s a difference between poison and venom that few people pay any mind to. You hear that someone was “bitten by a poisonous spider”. There was even one unfortunate newscaster who announced that someone was “stung by a poisonous snake”. (A new species, I presume.)

Remember: poison is ingested, (or inhaled, or even soaks through the skin). But most of the time, you have to eat it for it to affect you. Some creatures have evolved a toxin that dissuades predators from eating them, like the poison dart frog. There are also poisonous mushrooms (not to be confused with ‘shrooms that could make you very, very happy).

Venom is produced by some creatures, like spiders, snakes and wasps, as a weapon. They can inject it into your system using their stinger or fangs. Venom probably isn’t something you’re likely to eat.

Got it? And next time you venture outdoors, beware of those stinging snakes!