Putting the punctuation outside of the quotes is sometimes correct depending on the sentence. But according the Associated Press, the comma and the period ALWAYS go inside of quotes.

This is going to be a helpful resource Sean.

Davina’s last blog post..Roaming with the Metaphor

Ok, so here we go:

1. A grammar goof or two is ok, but it really detracts from the reading experience. I’m pretty mellow about this stuff but when I see things like “Your a looser” I’m apt to give you very little consideration as a serious writer. Figure it out or have someone with a clue proof your work.

2. Get on with it, already. Pertaining to blog posts and such, please make your point and try to be succinct. Even if it’s interesting to me, at about 1100 words – I’m done and will move on.

3. I have to echo your acronym point. Nothing is more frustrating to the reader than not understanding terminology that you feel is ubiquitous.

My two cents!

George

Tumblemoose’s last blog post..Vintage Typewriters and Deviled Ham

Something which is plaguing my mind these days is the so called Oxford comma.

I was taught to always omit the final comma before a grammatical conjunction. How about you two? What are your thoughts?

Oh, by the way, Janice is an excellent teacher when it comes to commas

You’re right on the money with this post.

LisaNewton’s last blog post..Free Summer Concerts in Los Angeles

Sean’s last blog post..How to Think Like a Black Belt in Parenting

~Remember that blogging calls for a different kind of immediacy so you need to have great instincts for register. A complete refusal to ever use exclamation marks or abbreviations can end up making your online voice sound cold or stilted. There are times when people want to hear a written simulation of your ‘real’ voice. It all boils down to knowing what your purpose is before you write a single word.
~Look out for your own verbal ticks and deal with them before they become invisible to you. We all have them, but other people’s overused expressions, restricted lexical groups and repetitive grammatical patterns and sentence structures start to bug us before our own do.
~ Make friends with the semi colon. It’s a great way to indulge a love of short sentences with an awareness of cohesion in a longer piece of discourse.
~Double check that every pronoun links back clearly to the word or phrase it represents. Just because it makes sense to you, doesn’t mean that others will immediately get what you’re referring back to.

This is what I left as a response to the same request for tips over at Write to Done a few days ago:

To write well, we have to live well. We have to be open, curious, present and engaged and fill our lives with as much passion and purpose as we can. We have to be bold, vulnerable and authentic, and write – and read – like we’re consuming soul food. Deep down, we have to believe that what the world needs from us is our passion, the thing that makes us feel truly alive, the way we filter the world, love the learning and pass it on. There is a holy triangle between reader, writer and the thing that’s written; write as if connecting with that one person who’s blessing you with their rapt attention is all that exists in that moment. People connect through spirit. It doesn’t matter what you write or how you write; connection and co-creating sensation are crucial.

janice’s last blog post..How to Breathe Life Into Your Writing

A couple of tips:
1. Look up a word if you have any doubt about what it means. (Type “def [word] into google)
2. When you revise your word, always look for a better wording, for each sentence.
3. Move emphatics to the end of the sentence.

Not to be a grammar snob but here’s another common mistake:

“Spell out numbers which start sentences.”

http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipsep95.htm

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