Category: Free Advice

Funny enough, one of the most common errors I come across when I’m editing is one of the simplest, and one that we all learn very early in primary school. It has to do with the capitalisation of proper nouns vs common nouns.

There are a lot of instances in which people make mistakes, but the one I want to deal with today has to do with family relationships, and how we refer to our parents, aunties, uncles, etc.

There’s a tendency to capitalise the word Mom, for example, regardless of the context. But remember that if we’re using the word generically, there’s no need to capitalise. If it’s a form of address, we do. Meaning you say: “Is that your mom over there?” (No capital M as you are referring to the person, not addressing them, and there are a dozen moms in the room.)

But we say, “You make the best shepherd’s pie in the world, Mom!” (Because you’re talking to the person. And yes, I do make the best shepherd’s pie in the world.)

You can also be talking about the person but using their title, as in, “Did you ask Mummy if you can sleep over this weekend?”

The same goes for other relationships. You say, “Your auntie is on the phone,” but you also say, “Auntie Aggie is on the phone”.

We cool now? Good.

Join the conversation. Please leave a comment.

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.