1. COMMAS! How do you use these correctly?
2. SEMICOLONGS! Do you ever even need ot use them?
3. Is it ever ok to start a sentence with and or but?
4. Is "IT" overused?

Commas are used to divide to sentences that are joined with a conjunction, (and, but, and a few others I need to look over again) and the comma goes before the conjunction. So the answer to number three is "not really." For an example:

"I loaded up the Hatrack river writer’s forum to see if there were any new messages, and I found there were a couple new ones."

Yes, I agree it could be a better example, but it works. The point is that each part of the sentence could be a sentence by itself.

"I loaded up the Hatrack river writer’s forum to see if there were any new messages. I found there were a couple new ones."

I can't remember the term for them, but the "Yes" at the beginning of the previous paragraph gets a comma also. Something else I will have to read again.

Commas also separate lists.

"I went to the store to pick up some bacon, eggs, and milk."

There were a couple more uses for them, and I can't remember the other ones.

Semicolons are actually a bit simpler. The semicolon serves as a list divider when you need commas in the list.

"The local carnival show will include; the Strong Man Hugo; Eric, the Lion Tamer; and the Bearded Lady Rita."

Also semicolons can be used as a conjunction without the actual conjunction.

"I loaded up the Hatrack river writer’s forum to see if there were any new messages; I found there were a couple new ones."

Once again I can not remember the other uses, but those two were the ones I remember clearly.

"It" is a pronoun. If you use it too much then it will become a bit annoying; if not confusing.

I will not try to go into pronouns since there are way too many conditions for them and I would most likely make quite a mess of it.

Disclaimer: I could be wrong on any part of what I have here in this message. So if Survivor or one of the other grammar experts sees a mistake I am sure they will be happy to correct me.

1. Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
2. Theodore Bernstein, The Careful Writer

(I've never read Grammar for Dummies.)

The Elements of Style is still in print. It's short, inexpensive, and you can find it at any bookstore. The Careful Writer is out of print; I found it at a used bookstore for $3. Once you have the basics of grammar under your belt, you're ready to start writing again.

Here's a correction of one Lord Darkstorm's examples:

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The local carnival show will include; the Strong Man Hugo; Eric, the Lion Tamer; and the Bearded Lady Rita.

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Can you start a sentence with "and" or "but"? Yes, you can; only a crusty old high-school English teacher would say that it's wrong. You should, however, study how "and" and "but" work in a sentence so when you do use them to start a sentence, you're using them correctly.

I've never wondered if I could overuse "it," but I guess I could. The problem one might encounter is that "it" becomes an all-inclusive pronoun for everything, thereby making your writing unclear and leaving it open for grave misreadings. You should always try to be as precise as possible.

I have to say that it took a bit of effort to bring it out while riding the subway and not feel like an idiot. Since I do pretty well as a programmer I tend to look down on the "dummies" books. At least the examples in the book are almost as horrid as mine; with the exception that the examples are correct.

For anyone who is like me and needs to learn some of the basics of grammar it is a great book. I have been able to get by with what I did learn in school and help from my friendly grammar checker. But I don't feel I will be able to write at a more professional level if I don't understand grammar fairly well.

I have The Elements of Style and made an attempt to read it. After realizing how little I actually knew about grammar I decided a more basic book was needed first.

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So if Survivor or one of the other grammar experts sees a mistake I am sure they will be happy to correct me.

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Actually, as writers we rarely need a deep understanding of the rules of punctuation. Part of this is because expressive writing often deliberately breaks those rules in order to create 'voice' effects. I'm very fond of using ellipses points (and though I usually use them correctly...where was I going with this thought?). But I also sometimes use a period with a tagged on sentance fragment to create the effect of a comma forte, so to speak.

Still, I think that it is probably for the best that we all try to get the basics right whenever we have no real reason to violate the rules, as that way readers will be more likely to accept a technical violation as an artistic decision...or at least less likely to find an inordinate number of errors, whether or not they get the point.

Ok, maybe it is just the impression I got, but I guess seeing you correct grammar so much I made an assumption. You have corrected mine on a number of occasions. Between you and some of the other grammar correcting experts I decided my grammar sucked. A bit of money and a nice brown Amazon box put me on the path to enlightenment.

Ok, I don't even believe that last bit. I can say that the grammar checker has not been working quite as hard as it used to be.

...You DO have a good dictionary, right?

"John went to the store." He said. (some grammar checkers will auto fix this one--by that I mean take it from right to wrong if you let it)

"Did he take the bus" she asked?

Punctuation makes your writing clear. It can aid in dialect--I can't imagine not having a great understanding of punctuation and expecting to get published.

I think I may have suggested Grammar for Dummies the first time. My high school scholar has found it very useful and so have I.

My question would be how can you write—and to write well you must read—and make such errors?

One other big one is the underline for italics in things you sub. You must include the end and start punctuation in that underline as well.

woman without her man is nothing

can be punctuated and capitalized this way:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

or this way:

Woman! Without her, man is nothing.

I am editing a document right now written by someone who seems to avoid commas like the plague. There have been numerous sentences in this document that I have had to read about six times to figure out where the commas should go, and what the author was trying to say in the first place. It's not just picky. It's imperative that you use your tools to be as clear and as succinct as possible.

That's not to say that you can't make a single mistake in the manuscript you want to send to a publisher. Everyone will understand a few errors, or even a moderate amount. But be careful, and proofread your own work, and have someone else proofread your work before you submit it. That tells the publisher that you care about this manuscript enough to make sure it shows its best face in public.

If you're going to do some research on grammar, punctuation, usage, and style, I'd suggest you look at the following things:

1. Commas, especially serial commas and when to use commas to offset subordinate clauses; commas used before coordinating conjunctions have already been discussed.
2. Misplaced modifiers: Any clause describing a noun in a sentence should be closest to the noun it modifies. For instance, in the sentence, "Slowly spreading across the floor, Rob watched the spilled orange juice," Slowly spreading across the floor should modify the orange juice, but instead modifies Rob.
3. Pronouns: Nearly everyone, at one time or another, misuses pronouns. Please, make sure you have an antecedent for every pronoun you use. Please remember that pronouns work like modifiers: the most recent noun of the same person is the noun that corresponds to a given pronoun. For instance, "Inigo wounds the six-fingered man each of the places he wounded him before he kills him" is atrocious. Who kills whom? Who wounded whom? When? Now, most of you know the story and know the outcome, but if you're writing a story no one has read before, you won't have that luxury. In this case, every he after "the six-fingered man" technically refers to the six-fingered man, even though the reader knows that can't possibly be true. Avoid ambiguity at all costs.
4. Parallelism: read about this in your research. It would take too long to discuss here. Everyone blunders in this area, too, but those who master it make their writing flow like clear water. It's a beautiful thing.
5. Tense: Keep tense consistent, and use it to do exactly what you want it to do.

Basically, the whole point of what most people call grammar is to make sure that you say exactly what you mean so that your language does not detract from your meaning. Pure and simple.

Sorry for the rant. I feel strongly about this; can you tell?

Oh, and to answer the questions Christine asked at first:

Semicolons are used to join two independent phrases (in other words, phrases that could stand alone as sentences) in cases where it feels weird to use a conjunction or a period. For instance, "I have nothing to say; you won't believe me anyway." It would feel odd to say, "I have nothing to say because you won't believe me anyway," and "I have nothing to say. You won't believe me anyway," is halting. It's all a matter of feel.

Yes, yes, yes. It is absolutely fine to start a sentence with and or but. But make sure you do it intentionally, with a feel in mind. Don't overdo it, and don't do it when you can join the sentences and it would sound better.

Now I don't know what a proper amount of "its" is, but I've since become quite sensitive to the little buggers and use them sparingly. The fact that Christine asked if "it" was overused tells me others have a similar predilection for two-lettered words spelled i-t, so it's probably not exactly an orphan disease.

One thing I noticed as I browsed through those old critiques. Often, "it" is accompanied by weak verbs, as in "it is accompanied." There's a lesson there.

I loved the example Brinestone gave:

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woman without her man is nothing

can be punctuated and capitalized this way:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

or this way:

Woman! Without her, man is nothing.

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I think that she's right about overusing "it" as well, by the way. The problem with the above excerpt is that the very first it refers to an undefined (though this usage of "it" is pretty conventionally assumed to refer to "the actual events"). The next it is pretty acceptable, since it can only really refer to the loan (of teh shackles and journal), which is the last noun used. But the complexity of the noun referanced and the fact that the previous "it" is technically undefined does tend to throw the reader.

The key word here is 'anonymous'. All anonymous uses of "it" are grammatically incorrect (as mentioned above your first use of "it" is technically anonymous).

No problem. Slapped a Band-Aid on it and kept on goin'.

A general rule of thumb I use with "it" (and pronouns in general) is, if the word doesn't immediately and vividly call to mind the image or situation it refers to, drop it and find a better word.

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There shouldn't be a semicolon after include." Rather, it sould be a colon. The sentence should read, The local carnival show will include: the Strong Man Hugo; Eric, the Lion Tamer; and the Bearded Lady Rita. The colon here sets up a list.

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There should be no punctuation at all after "include". A colon does not go between a verb and its subject. A colon goes between a noun and a longer description of it. Here are some correct examples:

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The local carnival show will include three acts: the Strong Man Hugo; Eric, the Lion Tamer; and the Bearded Lady Rita.

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We will lead our enemy to Aurenesweld,: the land of pain and death.

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As regards beginning sentences with "and" or "but", it's technically incorrect, but can be used to give a section of narrative an epic feal. This may be because it looks bery biblical (it's correct grammar in hebrew). This technique should be used sparingly (certainly never exceed Tolkien! -- Tolkien wanted to read like a translation from a foreign language), but is appropriate on occasion.

Just one other thing, pronouns dn't have to have correct antecedants. They only have to be clear, or have a good reason not to be. Yes, avoid using the same pronoun to refer to multiple things in the same sentence without clear antecedants (POV works wonders here), but don't bother making every antecedant the directly previous possible noun. Also, if you want a mysterious character, pronouns are fine. Consider _Lost_Boys_, which begins, "This is what his father called him," and doesn't specify who he is until the very end of the book.

No, it isn't.

"And" and "but" are coordinating conjunctions, and as such they can very well be used to start a sentence that relates to the previous sentence.

You can, in most cases, write such a construct as one single sentence without losing meaning. But sometimes starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction gives added weight to your point.

See the above paragraph for an example.

And, for the record, I do have a good grounding in basic grammar rules. I am familiar with the agreed upon rules for commas, for example. My motivation for making the post was that I was critiquing someone's sotry and found myself itching to remove some of their commas and put in commas in other places but I was not feeling confident enough in my own knowledge to do so. From the responses, I see that I am not alone in feeling less than confident about my grammar skills.

Christine, the passive voice should be avoided becasue it slows down and weakens one's prose. To write, "Jack hit the dog," is much stronger than to say, "The dog was hit by Jack."

However, the passive voice isn't absolutely evil. If we hold to the notion that each paragraph has its own subject, then the passive voice comes in handy. If the subject of a paragraph is a library, you might not want to write, "Jack Bulter built the library in 1941," but, rather, you might want to use the passive voice to keep the subject of the sentence consistent with the subject of the paragraph. In that case, you'd write, "The library was built by Jack Butler in 1941," or something like it.

In a sense, it's hard to analyze the passive voice taken in isolation from the sentences around it. Like most things in writing, you should examine each case for its strengths and weaknesses.

"I have a question about punctuation," she said.

-or-

Or in the case of (pronoun) asked, it can be a comma or a question mark.

"That's it; I'm leaving," she announced.

However, when using indirect dialogue tags, use a period. For example:

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"I have a question," she asked.

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"I have a question about punctuation," she said.

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"I have a question," she asked. "You are a nice person."

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You saw that I used a semicolon in my example dialogue. I like semicolons. I like the feel they lend to a sentence. The truth of the matter is, if you don't think semicolons belong in dialogue, don't put them there. There are several other ways you could write the dialogue I used.

Using semicolons in dialogue, particularly in a short bit,

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"That's it; I'm leaving," she announced."

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Punctuation is simply a graphic way of representing the pauses and inflection of our speech.

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Mmmm...when it comes to dialogue, I'm not so sure that's true about semicolons -- at least not when a comma or period would suffice. There's a difference between a period pause and a comma pause, but what would be the difference between them and a semicolon pause? Especially since semicolons are used instead of commas or periods, depending on the construction, in lists replacing commas, and between independent clauses replacing periods.

Not that semicolons would never be used in dialogue. Normal semicolon functions are still relevant for reading clarity, but if a comma or period would suffice, it seems to me that dialogue is more realistic without semicolons.

'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper which, burnt, turns to crumbling, frail dark tissue.'

They've said that it sounds wrong that I've mixed past tense ('burnt') with present tense ('turns'). But if I have both in past tense I think it sounds too lengthy.

'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper which, burnt, has turned to crumbling, frail dark tissue.'

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burnt, has turned to crumbling, frail dark tissue.'

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How about

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'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper, burnt, crumbling, and dark frail tissue.'

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That work?

“When it is burnt it has turned” is out of sync, tense-wise.

However, I’d rather see “crumbles” instead of “turns to crumbling.” -- “…the hair was like paper which, when burnt, crumbles into frail dark tissue.” (Similarly, writing “…the hair was like paper which, when burnt, has crumbled into frail dark tissue” doesn’t make tense sense, either. )

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'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper, burnt, crumbling, and dark frail tissue.'

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You might strive to get rid of the weak verbs and some of the adjectives:
'Hair, like a heap of burnt paper crumbling into charred tissue, shadowed eyes and lashes drawn in dark brown.'
Unless the context is hurt by such a change, of course.

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Please remember that pronouns work like modifiers: the most recent noun of the same person is the noun that corresponds to a given pronoun. For instance, "Inigo wounds the six-fingered man each of the places he wounded him before he kills him" is atrocious. Who kills whom? Who wounded whom? When? Now, most of you know the story and know the outcome, but if you're writing a story no one has read before, you won't have that luxury. In this case, every he after "the six-fingered man" technically refers to the six-fingered man, even though the reader knows that can't possibly be true. Avoid ambiguity at all costs.

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Now, is it just me, but does that sentence (while absolutely horrible) actually make sense in an unambigous fashion to everyone else?

The sentence tries to hard to hide this information.

Her eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown. Hair crowned her head like a heap of burnt paper that has turned to crumbling frail dark tissue.

It sounds wrong not because of tense issues but because hair is not normally described as the hair--unless we say the hair on her head, his head or even its head. You also use which instead of that. In this case it should be that. (that, not which--which is a choice this is an absolute) Which implies a choice--such as which one. You also need to simplify.

like bothers me as well.

Her eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown. Hair crowned her head in a heap of frail dark tissue.

Too many adjectives, no matter how original the description, overload the writing as well.

Her eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown. Hair, that resembled crumbling burnt paper, crowned her head in a heap of frail dark tissue.

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Her eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown. Hair crowned her head like a heap of burnt paper that has turned to crumbling frail dark tissue.

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'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper which, {when} burnt, has turned to crumbling, frail dark tissue.'

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I might add that, although “burnt” is a proper form of “burned,” it works better, in my mind at least, as an adjective, unless the writer is going for period language. I think that may have added to the confusion.

The “the” would be context-driven. In fact, “drawn” suggests the sentence may be referring to a painting or some such thing, but you have a point.

However, “like” is fine. To write

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Hair crowned her head in a heap of frail dark tissue.

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Edited to add:
Am I a pain on this thread? I'm concerned that I'm sidetracking it and I should have posted a new topic instead. I'll re-start it elsewhere if I'm a nuisance on this thread.

My sentence is now moving along the lines of:

'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper that, burned, crumbles to frail dark tissue.'

or

'Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper which, burned, crumbles to frail dark tissue.'

depending on which one of 'which' and 'that' ends up being correct - I need my grammar book NOW!

I suppose I should kill two adjectives too, especially as I've used 'dark' twice (and only just realised).

'Eyes and lashes were drawn in brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper which, burned, crumbles to dark tissue.

OK, now that I know the context--

Do you think of your hair as "the hair" when looking in a mirror?

First person--My eyes were--- My hair-- Hair like -- around my head

Third-- Eyes drawn in brown (etc) stared back at me surrounded by hair etc.

Now my big one--I am assuming you are using first person since it is always a challenge to describe a character in first person--the I character--without using a mirror. Like any cliché, it is overused. Gazing into a pond, mirror, or any reflective surface (unless a big change has happened--dyed hair, new contacts etc.) People rarely pay attention to their features in such a scrutinizing way.

Look for a new way to do it. Editors will be impressed.

I(Character) gazed at my (her) eyes--drawn in brown. Why couldn't I (she) have sparkling blue eyes like (so and so)? If the TV ads were to be believed, my (her) hair would fall in shinning locks instead of like a heap of burnt paper--a mess of crumbling frail tissue. (hair is tissue after all and it is a nice play on tissue and tissue paper)(good job there BTW)

This way she has reason to consider her features.

There are a lot of other ways to do it--this just to get you thinking.

If you want to research the concept, look up active vs passive voice. Voice indicates whether the subject of a sentence is actively performing the action or passively receiving the action. Generally, it's best to write in active voice, although passive voice is not wholly taboo, as Brinestone said. The problem comes when writers write predominately in passive voice and end up with boring, rambling prose.

A good exercise is to highlight all the weak verbs in a page/chapter of your work. All the wases, ises, ams, weres, even the seems. Also, you can set Microsoft Word to check your percentage of passive sentences by going to Tools, Options, Grammar and Spelling, and check the show Readability Statistics (or something like that). I'm not sure what a decent percentage is, but you can monitor yourself over time to see if you improve your stats. Or you can copy excerpts of writers you admire and see how they did. (I just thought of that. I gotta try it. )

Passive voice results in flabby writing:
Passive: When the mouse is moved, the cursor is also moved.
Active: When you move the mouse, the cursor also moves.
Even more active: Move the mouse to move the cursor.
Active voice cuts the fat.

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Eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown, and the hair was like a heap of paper which, burnt, turns to crumbling, frail dark tissue.

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Her eyes and lashes were drawn in dark brown. Hair crowned her head in a heap of frail dark tissue.

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Hair, like a heap of burnt paper crumbling into charred tissue, shadowed eyes and lashes drawn in dark brown.

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As you can see, switching from passive to active entails structural changes, but the sentences become more interesting because the verbs are more vigorous and help paint a more descriptive picture. You eliminate lazy verbs.

"Eyes and lashes drawn in dark brown. Hair like a heap of paper which, burnt, turns to crumbling, frail dark tissue."

BTW, WHICH is used correctly here.

WHICH and THAT are both relative pronouns--WHICH should be used only for inanimate objects (bricks, tables, pudding and, yes, hair), while THAT can be used for people, places or things.