Andrew Jack Writing

Andrew Jack's Writing Blog

Book Review: Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Website: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

If you haven’t heard of Grammar Girl, she’s the all seeing, all knowing Mignon Fogarty, host of the Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. She’s responsible for correcting some of my more astonishingly poor grammar mistakes, before I made them. I have been on her emailing list of Quick and Dirty Tips for some time now, and she consistently churns out excellent, timely advice on grammar problems.

Free.

So if she’s giving all this writing advice away for free, why should you buy her book? Because it’s an excellent read, that’s why. Most grammar and style books are as entertaining as reading a out of date tax guide, but Grammar Girl imparts the rules of style and grammar so naturally and gently that I had reached halfway through Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing before I had even realised I was being taught anything.

So if you, like me, have ever struggled with the rules that give our writing structure and form, then this book, and the Grammar Girl website are worthy investments of your time and money.

‘But Andrew!’ I hear you say (I have a vivid imagination) ‘someone else will take care of the editing for me, surely it’s the power of my story that’s important?’

Not so much.

If you don’t learn at least the basics of style and grammar the world will never see the wonder of your creation, because your story will languish at the bottom of a slush pile forever, before and overworked slush pile reader will read one sentence of your work and toss it in the ‘rejects’ pile. You will never get to an editor.

Grammar Girl makes the learning of grammar not only painless, but enjoyable; I can’t recommend her book Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing enough. Buy two and give one to one of your writer friends. *

* Any spelling, grammar or style  mistakes I make are entirely due to not paying enough attention to Grammar Girl’s tips, don’t blame Grammar Girl people.

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