Grammar Tip: An Aitch or A Haitch

HNot long ago, a publishing friend of mine asked me a question, as she was having a teensy little contretemps with an author, whose book she was about to publish.  He was so insistent that the part of his book’s title, which contained the word ‘historical’, should be ‘an historical’.  In fact, he was so insistent, it made her doubt her own knowledge.

So, let’s try and clarify this.  ‘H’, when aspirated, i.e. pronounced with a ‘huh’ sound, is a consonant. Words that begin with a consonant, when preceded by an indefinite pronoun, are therefore introduced with ‘a’. Continue reading “Grammar Tip: An Aitch or A Haitch”

My Golden Rules of Writing

book photo NRGuest Post
by Nicholas C. Rossis

Writers seem to fall into one of two camps: Those who love following the rules and those who love to break them. My view? The rules taught in workshops and classrooms only matter to editors and other authors, not readers. So, here are my rules; the ones no fiction writer should ever break. Continue reading “My Golden Rules of Writing”

And: The Rule That Never Was

Every time I begin a sentence with “and”, a voice in my head sings, “You’re not supposed to do that.” I usually fix it and apologize internally to my ninth grade English teacher. So it pains me to admit that after hours of research, I could find no official rule against using a conjunction to start a sentence. Yes, there is a raging controversy about it, but here’s what’s not up for debate: If there is or ever was such a rule, it has a long history of being ignored. I pulled six books at random from my shelves and easily found the following examples. Continue reading “And: The Rule That Never Was”