Martha Brockenbrough is the founder of National Grammar Day and author of The Game of Love and Death, which comes out April 28 and has received starred reviews from Kirkus Books and Publishers Weekly. Martha recently spoke with the Grammarly team to provide some insight into National Grammar Day and to share her perspective on language.
Grammarly: You established National Grammar Day in 2008.
Want to write a bestselling novel? Or maybe you’re more the screenplay type who wants to go straight to Hollywood. Whatever your writing goals are, sometimes the biggest obstacle between them and you is a nasty case of writer’s block. How can you free up your creative juices and write a story worth telling? Here are some ideas to get you started.
Go Wild for Words
Stephen King holds thesauruses (thesauri for you prescriptive Latin-lovers) in disdain, but don’t be afraid to rebel against his viewpoint.
Case refers to the form a noun or pronoun takes depending on its function in a sentence. English pronouns have three cases: subjective, objective, and possessive.
The subjective (or nominative) pronouns are I, you (singular), he/she/it, we, you (plural), they and who. A subjective pronoun acts as a subject in a sentence. See the sentences below for illustration:
In some ways, everyone is a writer. Have you thought about how much writing you do in one day? Don’t overlook these seven daily writing tasks!
According to Lifewire.com, people around the world send more than two billion emails per day. That’s 2.4 million emails every second! The format of some emails closely resembles that of physical letters. For example, business emails contain the salutation, body, and closing that you would find in a business letter.
In the month of February, Americans place a special emphasis on the achievements and history of black Americans, or Americans of African descent. Each year, a theme promotes one facet of black heritage. This year, 2016, the theme is “Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African American Memories.” The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) website explains, “From port cities where Africans disembarked from slave ships to the battlefields where their descendants fought for freedom, from the colleges and universities where they pursued education to places where they created communities during centuries of migration, the imprint of Americans of African descent is deeply embedded in the narrative of the American past.
Some of the greatest works of literature contain beautifully written declarations of love. But if you want to learn the rules of grammar, don’t look to these novels for help. Here are some of the most romantic quotes from literature and explanations of the grammar rules they bend and break.
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘To-night’ is possibly confused with the correctly spelled word, ‘tonight.’ In the past, this hyphenated spelling of ‘tonight’ was common, but it’s best to use the modern spelling in your writing to keep the meaning clear.
Scholarship prompts:
Who is eligible to participate? Participants in Grammarly’s scholarship contest must be residents of the United States (excluding Puerto Rico). In addition, each participant must either be:
Grammarly will award the scholarship directly to the accredited institution.
