Five Mistakes To Avoid in Your NaNoWriMo Novel

It’s National Novel Writing Month, and that means that writers around the world are working hard to write an entire book during the month of November. Congratulations to everyone who has taken on this challenge—it’s no easy task!

To help you with your masterpiece-in-progress, we compiled a list of the most frequent writing mistakes we encountered as we edited our 2014 NaNoWriMo project, a crowdsourced novel called Frozen by Fire. When it’s time to proofread and revise your manuscript, make sure to watch out for these common pitfalls.

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Proofreading your novel may not be as glamorous as composing it, but it’s an essential part of the writing process. After all, you put a lot of work into your book. Isn’t it worth spending the time it takes to polish your prose until it shines? Plus, you don’t have to do it on your own. Writing apps like Grammarly can help you spot mistakes you missed and can even suggest stylistic improvements.

What mistakes do you find yourself making, and how do you fix them? Let us know in the comment section or via our Facebook or Twitter feeds.

All of a Sudden or All of the Sudden—Which is Correct?

All of a sudden is an idiom that is a more poetic way of saying “suddenly.” A common mistake to make, especially for English learners, is to write all the sudden or all of the sudden. On a sudden is a historic but outmoded variant. Currently, all of a sudden is the only accepted usage.

Is It “All of a Sudden” or “All of the Sudden”?

Although all of the sudden has been used in centuries past, all of a sudden is the phrasing that eventually stuck. Perhaps it is because Shakespeare used of a sudden in The Taming of the Shrew in 1594, and centuries of grammarians couldn’t help but side with The Bard:

Tranio:

I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible That love should of a sudden take such hold?

Some say that on a sudden is an archaic Scottish variant, but consider that London-born Daniel Defoe used it in Robinson Crusoe in 1719.

My crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in danger of losing it all again.

Whatever the evolutionary path of this phrase may have been, the only accepted use of it is all of a sudden. You may hear all of the sudden occasionally in informal speech, but don’t let it creep into your writing, since there is no need to attract the disdain of grammar lovers.

Rover had been quiet for hours when all of the sudden, he launched into a frenzy of barking.

Rover had been quiet for hours when all of a sudden, he launched into a frenzy of barking.

The favored horse looked like a sure win until all of the sudden, a dark horse from the back of the pack started gaining.

The favored horse looked like a sure win until all of a sudden, a dark horse from the back of the pack started gaining.

All of a sudden could be replaced with the adverb suddenly in both of these sentences and they would retain their original meaning.

Rover had been quiet for hours when suddenly, he launched into a frenzy of barking.

The favored horse looked like a sure win until suddenly, a dark horse from the back of the pack started gaining.

Why all became part of the phrase is difficult to say. Perhaps it is meant to underscore how completely sudden an occurrence is instead of being just a fraction of completely sudden, and therefore somewhat expected. Idioms are mysterious that way.

Of course, all of the sudden could be called for in a sentence under certain circumstances and be the correct phrase. It just shouldn’t be used to mean “suddenly.”

All of the sudden moves Bruce Lee made thrilled his moviegoing fans.

A small minority of people may use all of the sudden habitually to mean “suddenly,” and you might be tempted to use it if you are used to hearing it but you don’t. If you revert to it conversationally, no big deal—just be sure to edit it out of your writing.

Double Negatives: 3 Rules You Must Know

You probably have been told more than once that double negatives are wrong and that you shouldn’t use them. However, usually, it’s left at that — without any explanation of what exactly a double negative is or why it’s considered incorrect (in standard English). We want to fix that. Here is the essential list of things you must understand about double negatives.

1 In standard English, each subject-predicate construction should only have one negative form.

Negative forms in English are created by adding a negation to the verb.

I will bake a cake.

I will not bake a cake.

I can go anywhere tonight.

I cannot go anywhere tonight.

We are planning a trip.

We are not planning a trip.

Sometimes there are negative forms of nouns — such as “nowhere,” “nothing,” and “no one” — that are used. If these are in a sentence, it is important that the verb in the sentence is not negated.

He’s going nowhere.

He’s not going nowhere.

2 A double negative is a non-standard sentence construction that uses two negative forms.

Double negatives are created by adding a negation to the verb and to the modifier of the noun (adjectives, adverbs, etc.) or to the object of the verb.

I won’t (will not) bake no cake.

(verb negation + object negation)

I can’t (cannot) go nowhere tonight.

(verb negation + modifier negation)

3 Learning standard English negation is difficult because many languages and some English dialects use double negatives conventionally.

Though it’s easy to assume that double negatives are simply unnatural aberrations, this assumption is wrong. In many languages worldwide, it is grammatically incorrect to use anything but the double negative! (This is called negative concord.)

No hay ningun problema. (Spanish) “There isn’t no problem.” meaning “There isn’t a problem.”

Я не хочу нічого їсти. (Ya ne hochu nichogo yisty.) (Ukrainian) “I don’t want nothing to eat.” meaning “I don’t want to eat anything.”

To make it more complicated, it’s not just foreign languages that conventionally employ double negatives but some dialects of English do as well! African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Southern American English, and some British regional forms use negative concord constructions. Negative concord is even used several times in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. (For example, a line about the Friar, “Ther nas no man no wher so vertuous,” literally means “there wasn’t no man nowhere as virtuous.”)

So, while double negatives are not correct in standard English, that doesn’t make them any less useful in other dialects. We encourage writers to learn how to negate sentences using the standard grammar — especially for professional settings — but we love the diversity of English (and language in general) and think that use of dialectal grammar is fine in open, less formal environments.

How do you remember not to use double negatives? Do you think double negatives should be considered incorrect?

Is ‘Ginormous’ a Word?

• Ginormous is a non-standard word.
• Ginormous is an adjective that means very big.

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In the murky territory of words you’ve heard people use but you’re not really sure whether you could call them words, ginormous takes up a lot of space.

What Does Ginormous Mean?

Ginormous originated during the World War II as a slang word among British soldiers. Its first official appearance in written form was in the 1948 A Dictionary of Forces’ Slang, 1939-1945.

Ginormous describes something that’s really big. It’s most likely a combination of two other words used to describe size: gigantic and enormous:

We saw a ginormous snail in the garden today.

Compared to Earth, the sun is ginormous.

While some might say that combining two words with such similar meanings isn’t a good way of creating a new word, the fact is that you can find ginormous in dictionaries, it has an established meaning, and people use it—it meets all the criteria of a real word. And even though it is an informal one, we can still use it when we want to say that something is ridiculously big or much bigger than expected; it just might be wise not to do it in academic or other formal types of writing.

Examples

Heck, you might as well learn to scuba dive, because you’ll be practicing most of your extraterrestrial excursions in NASA’s ginormous underwater practice tank at the Johnson Space Center as you train for your mission.

Flying Magazine

But no matter how great your Friday is, chances are it’s not nearly as euphoric as the day these people had diving into a ginormous pillow.

The Huffington Post

Entered Elvis, the ginormous reptile, as Billy went down on his knee to pop the question.

India Times

6 Endangered Words

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, endangered animal species are “in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of [their] range.” Applying the same principle to words, endangered words are used less and less until almost no one knows them anymore. Are your favorite words in danger of extinction?

Ambrosial derives from ambrosia, the mythological food of the goods. Ambrosial describes things that are divine or of exceptional worth. It also means especially pleasant in taste or smell.

Coxcomb has a meaning that’s already extinct. It was an alternative spelling of cockscomb, the fleshy growth on the top of a rooster’s head. The word came to refer to the head or the crown (even of a human), but now that meaning is archaic. The only surviving meaning evolved from professional jesters who once wore caps that resembled cockscombs. Today, a coxcomb is a conceited, foolish, or pretentious man who concerns himself too much with his looks and manners. With one obsolete meaning and one archaic one already under its belt, is coxcomb likely to survive?

Dirty could go “the way of the dodo” within 750 years, according to The Guardian. Researchers from Reading University predicted its extinction by applying the theory of evolution through natural selection. Mark Pagel, the biologist who led the research team, says that dirty is in danger because its evolution was the most rapid of all the words they studied.

Fishwives are almost exactly what they sound like—women who sell fish. In the past, the word wife could refer to any woman, married or unmarried. A second meaning of fishwife is a woman who has coarse manners or uses vulgar language.

Hark was once much more popular than it is now. The meaning “listen” or “hear” is now archaic. If you hear hark nowadays, it might be a hunter encouraging his hounds to follow a scent.

Whom is a pronoun that functions as the dative or objective case of who. People are becoming increasingly likely to use who instead of whom.

Why Words Become Endangered

Many times words seem to go extinct without rhyme or reason. However, sometimes there does seem to be a cause. For example, many people simply think that whom’s usage rules are too difficult to master. Others think that, perhaps because their usage is declining, words like whom and coxcomb sound pretentious. Other words fall into disuse because of their potential for causing offense. For example, fishwife can be offensive for two reasons. First, wife means a married woman in modern English, so it would be strange to call a single woman a wife. Secondly, the tendency of society these days is to use gender-neutral vocabulary. Many prefer fish seller or even fishmonger.

When an animal is endangered, people often take steps to save it. What do you think about the words on this list? Are they worth saving?