Hi all
Does anyone have any tips for improving grammar? I've got books galore but never feel I take everything in just reading about how it should be done. I need something more practical- for example a writing exercise or two. If anyone has any suggestions, or can point me in the direction of a website that can help, then please drop me a line.
Thanks
vicx

I don't know of any specific sites, though presumably there are some 'teach yourself grammar' books out there with exercises in them. I think it's genuinely very difficult to put the theory you can understand in principle into practice in your own writing. And don't forget that the prescriptive kind of grammar book, based on an idea of 'right' and 'wrong', is of limited use if you're writing fiction or poetry, since all sorts of 'incorrect' locutions may be just what you want at one time or another.

One thing I would say is to read tons and tons and tons of really good writing, and, if in doubt, go back a few years, where they're less likely to be using the kind of colloquial grammar which is technically incorrect. I'm thinking of writers like Graham Greene, say, or Elizabeth Bowen, Olivia Manning, William Golding. Even genre writing - especially stylists like Sayers, Wodehouse, Heyer - would do the job. You'll absorb some by osmosis, but it's worth getting curious about how some of their most striking sentences work: see if you can use the terms from the grammar books to work how the sentence is built, and why. Good grammar isn't only about correctness, it's also about developing your technical toolkit, and this kind of exercise will do both.

You could try posting some stuff on WW, and see what people think - we're knee-deep in English teachers and other experts. You may find that it's not as much of a problem as it seems while you're feeling self-conscious about it: there's certainly nothing wrong with the grammar in your post. And many of us post individual knotty difficulties of grammar or syntax or punctuation in the forums from time to time.

If you ever get to the point of wanting to submit work, and you feel that poor grammar is really going to hamper its chances of success, you could always pay to have it professionally copy-edited.

Emma

I'm wondering if what you want to improve is your writing style as opposed to your grammar. Perfectly correct English can be very wooden and boring: it's the sense of an individual style and 'voice' that brings grammatically correct writing to life.

As far as grammar and use of language goes, I'd recommend anything by David Crystal. Otherwise, I agree with Emma - the very best way is to read and read and read, and learn through osmosis. This does take time, though, and it's no coincidence that most professional writers were book addicts as children.

Excellent advice above.

Also, these are quite fun:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/skills/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_41.htm#exindex

I'd second getting some 'correctly' written prose to examine - to try and pick out what they are doing.

Grammar isn't my strong point either - I often feel nervous about it. Often getting other people to have a read helps, and getting to know your own blind spots (for example, I know I'm not very good with punctuation, so when I re-read my work I pay a lot of attention to this) goes a long way to improving things. Especially if your reader can tell you exactly why you've got it wrong.

Other than that, I try not to get too hung up about it. I've written a first person novel and a lot of her narration is grammatically 'incorrect' but very few people speak/write with formal exactness all the time anyway.

This advise wouldn't apply, however, if your first person narrator was very knowledgeable about grammar and getting it right was important to them. Or if it was a more formal, omniscient style.

This may sound a little counter-intuitive, but I would recommend having a stab at learning a foreign language (assuming you don't already speak one). I learned 2 at school - French and Russian - and I am absolutely positive that I learned more about English grammar from those (optional) subjects than I ever did from the English Language O level that was compulsory. We simply weren't taught grammar in English, even at a grammar school, whereas it was fundamental to both French and Russian.

Being forced to deconstruct an English sentence in order to render it in another language is a real eye-opener to the workings of the language. Plus, if you choose a language with a very strict grammar (like Russian, or perhaps one of its related languages like Polish or Czech which don't use the Cyrillic alphabet), you have no choice but to understand how sentences are really put together.

Alex

<Added>

(Oops, just noticed how old this thread is. My grammar might be fine, but my timing isn't so good)

I find this helpful.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index2.htm

Try reading 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss.
It is very funny and you absorb a lot of useful information without even trying!

Jen

Re, Lynne Truss: I know different things work for different people, but personally I find reading about mistakes very counter-productive. I have the sort of mind that absorbs and copies, which is why my spelling and grammar is generally good (though the spelling is going off a bit as I get old). So if I read about wrong ways of doing things I sometimes absorb those too...

But maybe I'm just weird?

As for an answer to your question, Vic, your grammar looks fine in your seed message. What makes you worry that it needs work?

(I mean, we can all improve and always good to strive for that, but you seem concerned.)

Deb

Well - yes and no.
After sometime with German I found I was bogged down by the 'Perfekt' tenses. Or rather, I had been bogged down by ... Sorry couldn't resist.