5 Grammar Rules That Show Off Your Smarts

• Collective nouns and pronoun agreement, oh my!
Among the many confusing aspects of the English language is pronoun agreement with nouns that refer to a group or an object consisting of several members. Known as collective nouns, words like army, committee, faculty, school and team, seem to refer to more than one person or object.

• Getting each one right every time
When should we write each and every? All too often these words are confused, especially where agreement (ensuring the sentence’s subject and the pronoun referring to it are both singular or both plural) is concerned.

• Go singular with collective nouns
Is an organization singular or plural? While an organization seems to be one entity, it often consists of a number of people and departments, suggesting that “plural” is the right answer. However…

• Toward vs. towards
Most days when editing, I’ll see one manuscript with the s-less version of this word and another with the s. Sometimes the manuscripts even come from writers who live in the same city. So which is right?

• Wellbeing, well-being, well being
How you spell this word depends on where you live in the English-speaking world.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

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