The IP challenge
This site is independent for certain, but despite the name it’s not altogether that pedantic or to elaborate in an immediately contradictory and pedantic way we may argue the toss over both important and less important opinions, ideas and concerns, to the point of petty pedanticism, but we’ll likely let go of the more trifling style over substance issues; you know like misplaced apostrophes or rogue commas – mostly because my secondary education was a right bloody shambles and as editor I scratch my head in moments of anguish and pain to know exactly where a semi colon should go (if I got it right above then kudos to me). Of course I’d like to think I get it right most of the time, but who can say (Lynne Truss probably) because I have this habit of always putting a comma before a “but”, no matter what, and I use speech marks to denote words (like I just did then, which is possibly wrong and probably a criminal offence in some parallel stickler universe of punctuation Nazis). Basically when it comes to grammar and punctuation I can be a bit hit and miss and so if you have been guided to this site as a “pedant” and are becoming apoplectic at misplaced dots and dashes then here is the IP challenge.
Spot a mistake in the grammar, punctuation or just something altogether erroneous and earn a point. No gold stars or paper hats as of yet. Earn fifty points and win a cash prize. I’m sure that’s got your petty hearts racing, but if you’re a pedant then perhaps it actually has, so leave your observations at my terrible mis-education in the comment section of the pages & posts where you discover them. Kind of a Where’s Wally/Waldo, but for hyphens and the like!
Indie Tom
My friend, bestselling author Norma Beishir, calls me the Comma Queen. I guess I love commas and apostrophe’s, LOL.
My grammar isn’t up to par, and sometimes my tenses are wrong, but, I figure, as long as the story is getting across to the reader, then what does it matter? Thankfully, I have an editor now who will do it for free.