I am such a Geek!!! (and I mean that in a totally good way!) I just received a copy of Strunk and White The Elements of Style and The Elements of Style Workbook!! As I read the Foreword and Introduction (yes, I read them – that’s what makes me a Geek) my muse hit me over the head with a 2×4  .

This nifty little (7”x4.5” 105 pages) book was first written in 1919 by Cornell English professor William Strunk. E.B. White (author of Charlotte’s Web and a student of Strunk’s) made revisions to the original book in 1971, 1972 and  1979 (and wrote the Foreword). The book is currently in its Fourth Edition (under $5 on Amazon) and is a gold mine for students and aspiring writers.

As you can tell from my logo for this website – I LOVE TO  LEARN! When I decided to become a writing coach, one of the first exercises that my coach had me do was catalog my strengths and weaknesses. One of my weaknesses was that even though I have my Masters Degree in Reading Education, I am NOT an English Teacher!! What that means is spelling and grammar are not my strong suits. Soooooo how am I going to work with other people to improve their writing when I struggle with the basics? I started gathering tools to help me improve in areas that I need some help.

In this time when most writing is done on computers, spelling and some basic grammar errors are taken care of by word processing programs. In my own writing and as I started to review other people’s writing, I found that computers still missed quite a few mistakes that you cannot afford if you want your writing to be taken seriously. Back in the day when I was going to college, I knew that I was a horrible speller, so I learned to recognize words that I was doubtful on how to spell – and I would look them up. Today I tend to do the same the thing with grammar, I’m fairly confident with commas, but semicolons tend to send me into a tailspin; when in doubt, I look it up!

As I started reviewing pieces for clients, I found myself getting bogged down second-guessing myself. In the interest of time and sanity, I found https://www.grammarly.com/i . I highly recommend this website!! You can do a surface scan for free or if you’re a more serious or professional writer they have paid options that do a deeper scan. With this tool, you can get the hard part of writing – getting your ideas in words down on paper, then turn it over to someone else to polish.

As I was doing some research on this article, I came across a quote from E.B. White “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Any time that we can free up time to enjoy the world is time well spent!