Quotation marks

Have you ever noticed how many unnecessary quotation marks are used?

I once wrote the following as a guest blogger:

Quotation marks seem to be fashionable at the moment, which is a shame as they are being used so badly!“Recommended by doctors and mothers” makes me feel like they are telling me a lie – if it is a genuine statement, why does it need to be in quotation marks?

Quotation marks are correctly used to :

 – indicate you are quoting someone

– indicate speech (e.g. He said “How are you?”)

– present a title of something

– show the text lacks credibility or truth, or at least is not verifiable (e.g. The media release stated the product was “superior”)

If you are tempted to use quotation marks for emphasis, try bold, italics, underline, colour, indenting or size of font instead – it will stand out more and not send any incorrect messages!

So I was rather amused when I came across a blog dedicated to silly use of quotation marks. I hope you enjoy seeing these grammatical blunders, as well as getting tips for your own writing!

Two Wolves

As a cub leader, the blog entry titled “Two wolves” at The Tall Poppy instantly caught my eye (cubs are named for wolf cubs pack as the young of scouting.)

Anne’s post relates the Chrokee story of us all have two inner wolves fighting for control, with one wolf repeseanting greed, fear, guilt and eog and the other represnting joy, peace, genrosity and compassion.

And which wolf wins? “The one you feed.”

I think that is very true – the more you focus on, the more you see in your life.

Both personally and in my writing, I try to avoid negatives to focus on helping people and seeing the good in life. I’m not perfect at it, lol, but I certainly keep my professional writing  positive and informative, and my whole business is modelled on helping other businesses succeed.

And I hope that by reading my blog, you are feeding your positive wolf.

Writing from home

Writing and chidren are my passions so running a writing business at home while also being a mum is an obvious solution for me.

Watching a friend look for a new job recently, especially as she may have to move interstate to get a great job, has reminded me how much I value working from home.

• I don’t waste time commuting to the city
• I don’t create any polution travelling to work!
• I control my hours and days
• I can say no to clients or projects if it suits me
• I can go on excursions and help at school – which I enjoy and consider important, but it also gives me a mental break from writing which actually helps me write better!
• It’s a good excuse to not do the dusting every week!
• I don’t have work colleagues distracting me as I write – I can sit for hours uninterupted (as long as the kids are at school!) and concentrate on writing

Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Telling the tale…

I’ve heard of a fun way to write a story and find a lot of new blogs. It’s as simple as each person writing one sentence and building the story as we go – and there will be multiple versions of the story in the end, too.

Here’s what we have to do…

Here is the way it works:

1. Copy these instructions and the following story into a post on your blog.

2. Read the story so far and add your sentence to it. It must make sense because this will eventually be a real story.

3. Add your blog link to the links listed. Every time a new sentence and blog link is added yours will receive some link love too.

4. The only rule is that no smutty sentences are allowed!

“Telling the Tale

I really don’t remember how we came to be here.  I am not sure that I really want to know!

However one thing that I do remember is that we followed a really bright light, that flashed every once in a while. We followed it blindly for some time and then when we came to a stop we were utterly amazed!

Looking down into a valley, we could see it wasn’t just one light, but hundreds of them converging.”

Contributing Authors:

The Tall Poppy
Just Delete That.
madmadmummy
Small Business Diva
Word Constructions

 Have fun – I look forward to reading some great stories!

Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs