Fractured Clauses

Fractured Clauses Ah, grammar; everyone’s favorite subject. I can see your eyes glazing over already. However, for the sake of good writing and better stories, let’s talk for a minute about clauses. In my recent reading, I’ve been running into quite a few instances of clauses gone wrong. Poorly written, clauses can be awkward at best and can cause major confusion at worst. Do you really want your readers to be confused? I didn’t think so. Continue reading “Fractured Clauses”

A Helping Hand…that which who are is…

I was summoned. The EM wanted to see me. I knew what it was: my dress code. Well, I did get Madonna’s cone bustier cheap on eBay—I was so very sorry about the EM’s eye. Or perhaps it was my body-piercing. Look, I found this dinky little stud with the initials ‘EM’ on it. Okay, perhaps the tongue wasn’t the best place for it, but you can’t dithcwiminite againtht thomeone jutht becauthe they have a sthpeeth impediment. Oh, I know…it was the tattoo. Come on, the tattooist was 93 and a bit deaf. How was I to know he’d misunderstood ‘Indies R Us’? I did tell him Indies started with an ‘I’ not a ‘U’….anyway, it was a bogof and the tattoo on my—oh, never mind.

Anyway I was a Very Worried Minion, and I was trepidating (is it only me that thinks trepidation should have its own verb?). I slunk into the EM’s bunker and there he was. Sitting with his head resting limply in his four hands. He’d written ‘Help’ with all the red M&Ms and was sucking the others up with a straw and pea-shooting them at his statuette of Popeye: I think he was trying to get them into his pipe. He was whimpering pathetically.

“Cathy, I’m confused, I’m nonplussed, I’m addled, I’m perplexed, I’m puzzled, I’m baffled and befuddled, I’m confounded, I’m flustered, I’m…”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, NO. It was worse than I thought. He’d swallowed the thesaurus.

“Help me, Cathy,” he continued after I’d wiped the dribble off his chin. I left him to digest, with Mr Pish sitting on his lap, rather worryingly scratching the EM’s ear, and I tried to make sense of his dilemma…

He was addled by two things—that/which/who, firstly. Continue reading “A Helping Hand…that which who are is…”