Literally

 Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you can remove this word, and your writing will be much cleaner and more accurate without it. Either it’s redundant, or it’s used incorrectly.

For example, “Monica literally stayed out until 3 AM.” How different is that from saying, “Monica stayed out until 3 AM”? The word literally adds nothing to the sentence. If you want to emphasize how late Monica stayed out, you could say, "Monica actually stayed out until 3 AM" or add an exclamation mark. In this context, "literally" is used correctly, but it doesn’t add anything to the prose.

However, more often than not, the term is used incorrectly. It’s one of my pet peeves and makes me want to pull all my hair out when I see a sentence written in the first person where our protagonist says, “I literally died.” Hmm, I don’t think so. Unless you’re making that statement from the Upside Down or communicating with us through a Ouija board and you are in the realm of the dead, you did not literally die because literally means actually. You could say that you virtually died, i.e., it felt like it. That would be good. Not good for you, but it’s grammatically correct.

So, be on the lookout for the term “literally” in your writing. If it’s your vocabulary, it could easily slip into your manuscript or report and confuse readers.

 

 

 

Forgive Me But I Grew up in New Jersey!

    

Today’s Writing Tip is about using a gerund with a possessive pronoun. I find this rule very confusing and almost always get it wrong, particularly when I’m talking. Writing is a slightly different story, but at least five times out of ten, I’m going to miss this one.

Here are some sample sentences. This is what many of my authors are likely to write, and this is certainly how I grew up talking in New Jersey. I didn’t even realize this was a problem until I started finding it in print everywhere in the books I was reading. Here is what you don’t want to write:

1.       Why would me being there cheer her up?

2.       Sarah was disturbed by him falling asleep during the press conference.

3.       If you don’t mind me asking…

4.       I appreciate you taking my call.

 

The sentences above are all incorrect. Here’s how they should be written:

1.      Why would my being there cheer her up?

2.       Sarah was disturbed by his falling asleep during the press conference.

3.       If you don’t mind my asking…

4.       I appreciate your taking my call.

The trick I have learned to identify when I’m likely to get this wrong is to look for words that end in ING. If we take the first sentence, “Why would me being there cheer her up?”  we have to remember that me is not the focus. My being there is the focus. My being asked is a gerund, a term that is derived from a verb, but it functions as a noun, so it should be preceded by a possessive adjective.

For the most part, I wouldn’t worry about this at all in conversation, but it’s important to try to get it right in writing. And you can take great liberties with this in dialogue. If your character wouldn’t talk this formally, you can write the dialogue exactly the way he or she would talk.