elanya

Having my work edited by other people makes me more aware of some of my consistent grammatical errors. I often abuse the terms 'which' and 'due'. I am inconsistent about using commas after all elements of a short list (before the 'and'). I sometimes have difficulty avoiding using the passive voice. I have a thing for prepositional phrases, and use them often to avoid using possessives for inanimate objects. I would much rather say, for example " The tines of the fork' than 'the fork's tines'. And it really is a matter of animate versus inanimate. How bizarre o_O. I also really like using colons: they are just nifty. I have checked a number of different writing references and they are ambivalent as to whether or not you need to capitalize the second phrase. I think it looks dumb, so I'm not doin' it! If you're going to capitalize, you may as well not bother with the colon. I just have to try to use them more sparingly, as overuse can undermine their impact. Oh and finally, I have a penchant for abusing commas, mostly putting them in places where they aren't strictly necessary, or marking superfluous verbal pauses. Rar!

Well, I am hoping that my awareness of these idiosyncrasies will not pass, and I can actually use this experience to improve my writing, There isn't always going to be a Carl around to viciously edit my works and beat me over the head with The Chicago Manual of Style and The Elements of Style