Using Grammar as Your Creative Toolbox with Patty McGee

304 / Are you curious how understanding grammar—not just as a set of rules but as a tool for creative expression—can transform your writing and help you find your unique author voice?

✨ This week’s sponsor is Vellum: http://tryvellum.com/wish

We talked with Patty McGee, a literary consultant and author of Not Your Granny’s Grammar to unpack why grammar isn’t about memorizing rules, but about developing your unique voice. 

Patty shared tips on building foundational skills, using grammar to enhance your writing’s rhythm, and why it’s totally normal to make mistakes. 

• Finding your writing voice through sentence rhythm
• Overcoming grammar embarrassment as an author
• Practical resources for learning grammar
• Effective strategies for giving and receiving feedback  
• Trends in grammar and punctuation in modern writing

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• Shoutout on a future episode

⚡Links: 

www.pattymcgee.org

http://tryvellum.com/wish

Amazon algorithm changes and tips: https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/2026/01/24/a10-sales-rankings-explained/

Joanna Penn’s 2026 trends and prediction: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2026/01/05/2026-trends-and-predictions-for-indie-authors-and-the-book-publishing-industry-with-joanna-penn/   

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

As soon as we stop looking at grammar as a set of static rules, and rather the way that a an artist uses a paintbrush, that can shift our mindset completely and just know you are artists.

Sara 0:22

Welcome to Wish I Know Men podcast.

Jami 0:24

I'm Sarah Rosette and I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have Patty McGee. Yes, we do. Y'all it's a fun show because it's about grammar.

Sara 0:35

Yeah, don't be scared off because it's about grammar. Because we really talk about using grammar to craft your stories and to help it showcase your voice, basically. Right.

unknown 0:45

Yeah.

Sara 0:46

Yeah. What? Say that again. I missed it.

Jami 0:48

We put the MIR in grammar. I was just trying to come up with something fun. Like we put the fun and dysfunctional, but yeah, but yeah. There's not anything we're doing. The M and M and grammar.

Sara 1:02

There we go. That's that's fun. I'll take that.

Jami 1:05

Yeah, no, but it's a great episode. And we just we talk about a lot of really interesting things. She is actually, she does grammar for or grammar books for educators, not writers. But it it was interesting how we found a lot of crossover. And of course, you know, grammar's grammar. So, you know, right. Yeah, it was.

Sara 1:25

It was really good. And we talked about being embarrassed about grammar or our lack of knowledge about grammar and you know, strategies for giving feedback, that was in there too, and trends in grammar, because you know, grammar is not written in stone, and so you know how things change. But anyway, so that's coming up. And before we get into everything else, we need to mention our sponsor of this month is Vellum. So thank you to Vellum. We'll talk more about that in a minute. I've got two links I wanted to share. Joanna Penn, a while back, did a podcast on 2026 trends and predictions. And it was excellent.

Jami 2:01

Really was.

Sara 2:02

Need to go check that out. One thing she talked about that was really interesting was live selling, uh, like you know, being on TikTok or wherever and talking about your book and selling it online. And there's another episode specifically focused on that. But I thought that was interesting. I know definitely that's not for me, maybe for you.

Jami 2:22

I don't know if it's for me either. I I don't know.

Sara 2:25

Yeah, but some of the other things she talked about was AI search, how indie authors are selling direct more. So there's a lot of good stuff in there. So I definitely check it out. And I'm not a futurist, so I always listen to Joanna and what she has to say because I need a creative pen with twins. Yes.

Jami 2:43

For those of you for new people, because there, you know, we just assume everybody knows who Joanna Penn is, and most people do, but in case you're new to the writing world, woman to know for sure.

Sara 2:57

Yeah, so I think this is episode 844. So I will link to that in the show notes. And then the other thing I found really interesting is an article about Amazon's algorithm changes, and this is from let me get it right, the new publishing standard. And basically the things that we've been seeing for a while with Amazon, it's like they're kind of solidified. Used to, you could run a book book or you know, ads and get a big spike, and that would help you be visible. And now that's not the case. The things like that are getting pushed down. So we had a summary of what has happened, how things have changed, and then suggested actions. And I'll just read off a couple of these. One of them was planned promos for 30-day arcs, not single-day deals, price pull, small, frequent reductions, outperform big drops. So, you know, used to if you could drop your book, you know, from $3.99 to 99 cents, you could get a big boost. But now maybe it might be better to drop it just a little bit over time. And then monitor rolling seven-day units, not hourly rank shots, screenshots.

Jami 4:03

Yeah. And I feel like they're putting a lot of pressure, a lot of the onus on us. Like, yes, just fix the ranks and let us see them every day. I don't understand why we have to wait. That's stupid. Sorry. Yeah. That's a hot take for Jamie. My outside thoughts.

Sara 4:24

Your inside thoughts came outside. Yeah, everything's different now. The strategies that we were using a couple years ago are not the strategies and tactics you want to use now.

Jami 4:34

It makes me feel a little bit better because I'm coming back into it. You know, like well, I'm having I'm learning with everybody else. So, you know, it's not like, but it's still so frustrating. And I know that my friends who have, you know, they've been, you know, you, but my romance friends, it's very frustrating because rank was really, especially in KU, that was how you knew what was happening. I mean, you measure the health of your book and your launch and what was going on by your rank. And now that is not the case.

Sara 5:10

And see, since I was white, I hardly ever looked at my rank. So I didn't even know what it was. I didn't care because as long as the books were selling, that was fine. So I would look at sales, not rank. But it you do want your book to be visible. So we're gonna have to figure out how to work with this new algorithm.

Jami 5:30

I talked about that in my launch workshop, you know, about how things have changed, and now the things we need to do to get visibility, which are different. It's not that big rank spike, it's yeah, more prolonged, slow and steady. Yep, yeah.

Sara 5:45

So yeah. So I'll link to that in the show notes. Great. And then I had two things that I noticed in Slack that I completely overlooked when we did the 300th episode. We asked for feedback and thoughts. And there were two in Slack that I completely missed. So I wanted to give a shout out really quickly to Krista.

Jami 6:05

So I wanted to, I want it to just continue. Birthday is not a birthday, it's a birthday month.

Sara 6:12

That's right, not a week, birthday month. So Krista said she didn't have any specific moments from the podcast that she remembered, but she said, you often say exactly the right thing, the thing I need to hear right then. I'm like at the end of last year, when you said it might be the right time to wait right now instead of taking action. And she said that was a perfectly timed message for her. And so that's awesome. We love hearing that. And then Doug said, My favorite thing about the podcast is the feeling of eavesdropping on old friends. I wrote something up and then asked Claude to create one of those 100-word flash fictions from it. And he posted what it came up with, and it's really funny. And I don't want to read the whole thing out because I'm not good at reading fiction stuff aloud, but I'll post it over in Substack when this episode comes out. So you can go over there and see it.

Jami 6:59

Yeah, yeah.

Sara 7:00

And feel free to post your own flash fiction over there too. If you want.

Jami 7:05

Wish I'd known them flash fiction.

Sara 7:07

Yeah, wish I'd written today flash fiction or something like that.

Jami 7:12

What's been going on with you?

Sara 7:14

I've been writing, I'm doing my thing that I talked about last week where I work, I do dictation, work on it for a couple of days, and then the rest of the week is admin and podcasting and stuff, and it's going well. It's taking some of the pressure off, which feels good. Yeah. And doing some research. I've been over on Substack a little bit, poking around there, trying to find some people and follow them. So if you followed us, the publication, which I know then, I'll try and find you and follow you as an individual. Just I'm learning how to use Substack basically.

Jami 7:44

Yeah. I still haven't really learned how to use it. I need to, that needs to be on my list of things to do. Yeah. Well, what have you been doing? I have been writing, and I got to the end of this book again, you know. I guess this is my third time through, but but it's it was the big edit. You know, the first two were just like like the second time through it. There were there were holes in that story, but you know, I had gone to the end, but but like I'm I'm through this was a big edit. I still have to put things on the wall uh on the walls and totally get it and stuff like that. But this is yeah, and most of that's done, uh even. But you know, as you get to well, I don't other people may not be like this, but as I get to the end of the book, I get excited and just you know, and I I start writing over and yeah, exactly. So yeah, I get that. Yeah, I've every day last night I wrote worked all day and then took a little break. I I met my daughter's took a little break to have dinner and stuff, and then started again and worked for about four hours last night.

Sara 8:58

So yeah, you are just back in the zone.

Jami 9:00

I well, I am. It's it's been it's been good. It's hard to get started. I will say that. You know, like where I usually go someplace here. I've been going to this one coffee shop, and it's hard to for me to get started, but once I get started, I'm good. I don't I don't deviate, I don't get on my phone, I don't, but it's hard to get started. And I don't know, that's probably an ADHD thing.

Sara 9:29

No, I have the same thing. I just I I end up doing all these other things, like things for the podcast, and you know, oh yeah, I needed to call to schedule some service or something to come out to our house or make a doctor's appointment or something. But if I go, if I open the manuscript and I tell myself, just look at that first line or that last line and see if it needs to be edited or something. Once I start doing that, then I'm I'm in it and I get going. So it's like I have to trick myself and say, just do one, just focus on one sentence, and then that kind of gets me going. But I dread it too. Well, I don't know why it's so hard to get over that initial.

Jami 10:06

It's weird.

Sara 10:07

Diving into the manuscript. I think it's because it's overwhelming to me because I know how much there is left to write and how much there is to edit.

Jami 10:13

Yep. Yeah. And and you know, I've been through it enough that like most things are not really very, you know, I'm not crying like I was with the first draft. But the last two days there have been a couple of things. So now I'm in a new city at a new coffee shop crying. So I'm just spreading the love or around.

Sara 10:34

So you should just take your box of Kleenexes with you, and then have a bunch of bookmarks beside you, and people say, Are you okay? So yes, I'm an author here. Have a bookmark, have clicks. All right, and so our sponsor this week, the corporate sponsor is Vellum. We have our supporters that support the podcast that support you know what we do all the time. The corporate sponsor for this week, though, is Vellum, and they kind of come alongside and help contribute to keeping the lights on and everything. So I was thinking about Vellum today, and I think one of the things I really love about it is the way I can make each book unique, uh especially with the special editions. Um I like being able to, you know, you can do the chapter headers, you can do color now real easily, you can do full page images, which I do that a lot with maps. I put that in for the special editions. But I went to the library and picked up a hole today. And when I got it, it was so I opened the book and it's got little, it's a mystery, it's got little footprints on the top of each chapter heading.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Oh, yeah, like mystery footprints.

Sara 11:42

And I was like, why am I not doing that in just all my editions, like my regular edition? It doesn't have to be a special edition. And Bella makes that super easy. So that's in the back of my mind now. What can I do? You know, what little changes can I make that give a little extra.

Jami 11:58

But I was gonna talk about too, even though I haven't done special editions, but I just redid the interior of all my books because they weren't they weren't matching. I mean, yeah, I just had, you know, in the series, I had I just hadn't been careful, I guess. And they didn't have the same kind of design and stuff. And so I went through first of all, they have so many things to choose from.

Sara 12:22

And yes, so much now.

Jami 12:26

There's very clean lines, like if you write nonfiction and stuff, but you know it's gonna look good. That's the thing. You just know it's gonna look good. One thing we should say that we didn't say last week, I noticed was that vellum is a Mac product. I mean, yes, Mac product, but you have to have a Mac to use it, and you used to be able to do a workaround. I don't know in the cloud or something like that. I don't know if you can do that anymore. You know, if you could find a use Mac that borrow a friends for an afternoon or something, borrow friends, get your daughter. That's what I did for a while. I got my daughter who had a Mac, she did my formatting for a while.

Sara 13:09

So yeah, yeah. And you could outsource that, you could have somebody else format it in Vellum and have them give you the Vellum file when you're first starting out. And then once you've got that file later on, if you get Vellum, you could just open it in Vellum, and then you can make your changes that you need real easily.

Jami 13:26

Absolutely. Yeah, so love them, love them. They're such great people to work with, and we're very happy that they're a sponsor.

Sara 13:35

Yes. So if you're interested in Vellum, you can go to tryvellum.com slash wish, and that link will be in the show notes too.

Jami 13:42

And we should get on with the podcast.

Sara 13:44

All right, here is Patty. We are really happy to have Patty McGee with us today. Hi, Patty, how are you?

Jami 13:50

I'm good. Happy to be here. We're glad you're here. Patty's just outside New York, New York City, correct? So she is frozen in right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yes, I'm frozen in and she's trapped. Yep. And saying that I'm from right out right outside New York City is a nice way of saying I'm from New Jersey. Ah, well, there you go. It sounds better.

Sara 14:16

That is funny. Let me read your bio and tell everybody a little bit more about you. Patty McGee is a nationally recognized literary consultant, speaker, and educator with a passion for transforming classrooms into spaces where language and learning come alive. With decades of experience as a teacher, coach, and advocate for delightful literary practices, Patty has worked alongside educators across the country, partnering to unlock the full potential of their students. And her book, her current book is Not Your Granny's Grammar, which is her third book. And I love that title.

Jami 14:46

I do too. I do too. How did you get started, like you writing and working with educators and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Yeah, so I first started teaching back in 1994. Okay. And I just found that my literacy instruction was just abysmal because one, I was really good at reading and relatively good at writing. So nothing was challenging for me. And so because of it not being challenging, I wasn't really sure how to teach how to work through challenges because I hadn't had that experience. I had resources, but those resources usually aren't teaching anything. Like I needed instructional methods, and I got much better at all things literacy, but I found two areas that were problems of practice for me. One response to writing, because the only way that I knew how to respond to student writers was to correct the heck out of their papers. And that's not instruction. And that was a big thing for me to wrap my head around. It's correction, it's not instruction. Like I had to figure out how to teach writing so that writers grow. So that was what my first book was on. But my sec second problem of practice was grammar. And that took a very long time to be able to find something that I could understand that went beyond memorization, worksheets, correction, that all and then immediate expectation of usage. Because that's just, I don't know if you were taught that way, but that was the methods that were used when I was in school. And then correcting the heck out of the grammar, which meant I didn't know how to use it, but I wasn't learning it. I found that is a problem of practice still. So here we are 30 something years later, and that is how I got my third book focused, was just pretty much studying what I can do differently with grammar instruction. And it finally coalesced a couple years ago. But it's the same publisher I've been using too. So the one for feedback that moves writers forward. I'm like gesturing over here because that's what the picture of it is. That was more on like response to writing that wasn't correction and went through Corwin. And then I stayed with them for this grammar book. It was a nice relationship.

Sara 17:44

Receiving correction, but not instruction. This sounds very familiar because a lot of times we send things off to copy edits and then they come back and you have the correct way to do it, but sometimes it doesn't make sense in your head. So that all sounds super familiar. What do you wish that authors or just people in general knew about grammar?

SPEAKER_01 18:06

I wish that people knew solidly four types of sentences. Simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and then the ever-elusive compound complex sentence. Because those are top of the food chain there. Yes, exactly. That's a seventh grade standard, as a matter of fact. But when we have go-to sentence structures, we can write more fluently because we can keep structure in mind along with meaning. And then when we revise our writing, we can really look at the structures we've used or intentionally misused to in order to think about is this the rhythm we want our writing to have? Is this the music we want our writing to sound like? And when we have just in our back pocket solid four go-to sentences that we can always like turn into non-sentences, it's just helping us get things down on the page quickly, more easily. Because we know that drafting part is a beast. So if we have sentences in our back pocket, it will help us work with that beast.

Jami 19:35

That's great. For me, I came, I did not begin writing until I was 50 because I had such bad grammar that I had always made up stories, but I never wrote them down because I was embarrassed. And anyway, but what I did, what I realized when I started writing, and I was in a critique group, so they were actually teaching me to write as we were going along, was that kind of melody of a sentence. It was just like, and I think that rhythm of the of a sentence and how you write that rhythm of a sentence, what I now believe is that is your voice, because we all sing a different song. We all all of our rhythm is very different. And I just realized that was I understood mine pretty quickly. I think it's because I'm I was older, but yeah, that's so interesting that you said that because I re distinctly remember having that thought. This is it's like writing a song, it's like how this sentence flows and how you feel when you read it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Can I also just say something about you feeling embarrassed about your grammar? I just want to say that is one of the most prevalent feelings of people who have been educated and are putting themselves out there, whether they are writers themselves or in some way writing for other audiences. I had someone contact me who writes grants to be able to get money for this museum that she's a part of. Right. And she's it's like grant writing is its own genre. But grammar then, if not really she wasn't secure in the sentence usage, and that was embarrassing for her. And teachers feel embarrassed because that's who I write for, teachers feel embarrassed because they feel like they're supposed to know grammar. Yeah, and so they may not teach it or they may not admit it because of course you're supposed to know grammar if you're gonna write a book, of course you're supposed to know grammar if you are have graduated college, of course you're there's that assumption. And as soon as we stop looking at grammar as a set. Of static rules, and rather the way that a an artist uses a paintbrush, that can shift our mindset completely and just know you are artists and how you choose to create on the page grammatically knowing some things, just some foundational things, and then also how you want it to sound.

Sara 22:27

Yeah, I think that goes back to the way you said revise to use or misuse. And so talk about that a little bit about how you can intentionally break grammar rules to get things across.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah. I often equate it with that Picasso was a fine artist before he got all Picasso on us. If we know some of those basics and those basics are pretty fluent, then when we choose not to use the basics for style, for effect, that's really where, as you were saying, Jamie, like that's where your voice is found.

Jami 23:13

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's just so true. I've often said that I I wish I could just go back. I wish I could go back to third grade, like just go sit in a third grade class and start from there because they're just things, the basic things that I believe I missed. And but I can't do that. So where would you say besides sentence the sentence structure? What and besides your book, what's the best way for authors to really get this information or anyone, not just authors?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Yeah. The first thing I want to say in response to that is you were probably exposed to the things that you feel like you might be missing, but the methods that were used to teach it were not suitable for everyone. They worked for a small few, and that's it. And so that's another reason why, just back to that feeling uncomfortable around writing because you don't feel comfortable with grammar, I think it also stems from that. I think that one place we can look, though I don't have one specific place that I think really teaches grammar, it will tell us some things we need to know about grammar. So I really like Grammar Girl. I really like Purdue, the OWL, OWL, as a resource. Honestly, the person I've learned the most from in terms of grammar is my co-author. He just had a teacher in he went to University of Delaware and he was an English major. And you could not graduate as an English major from there unless you got an A in this grammar class. And to get an A to pass, you had to pass the grammar class, and you had to get an A to pass. And he just remembers it all. And so that's the I turn to grammarians when I'm writing to find out, and he's usually the one. I used to call him grammar Yoda, but Yoda doesn't speak grammatically correctly. So I think it's this, yes. So now I call him the grammar grammar hotline. And it's just knowing that it's impossible to know everything about grammar. There isn't a single style guide, there's multiple style guides. Right. And let's just make that normal.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Make it normal.

Sara 25:58

It will release a lot of stress if we do that, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, there was a point when I had changed editors because I was writing a different type of book. I had been writing contemporary and I switched to writing historical. And so I got an editor who edited historical stuff. And I was noticing I was getting things back from the second editor that I hadn't gotten from the first. And then there's certain things that it's more a style choice of personal choice. And I thought I need my own style sheet and say this is how I want to treat these certain things because that's how I want to do it, which is very freeing in a way to say I don't have to match up to the Chicago manual style, as long as I'm consistent. And yeah, yeah. What do you think about your own style sheet?

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Yeah, I love that. I think when you, I mean, you're both such prolific authors that when you decide on your style sheet, because you're so self-aware, metacognitive, about your writing, I think that then you have found your voice and you can then create the rules, quote unquote, that you want to follow, that you want incorporated, and those that when suggested might be overlooked.

Jami 27:18

You were talking about how to how to help authors grow. How writers grow, authors grow. How how do you do that? Like, how do you help instead of just correcting, how do you help an author grow in their knowledge of grammar?

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah. I have a few things, but I'd like to start with an example in my life that shifted how I teach writing. And if I hadn't said this before, I teach young writers K through 12, and I teach teachers how to teach writing. But one thing that really shifted the way that I thought about teaching writing was a relationship that blossomed between my dad, who wanted to learn how to crochet, which is a very rare father. I haven't found anyone else who has a dad who crochets. And then his sister-in-law was a master crocheter, or is still a master crocheter. And what they would do would be get together, and my dad's only genre was blanket. He did not go to scarf or hat nor mitten. It was blanket. And so when my aunt would come and sit with my dad, this makes me tear up a little bit because he passed two years ago, but it's the most beautiful relationship. And he would make blankets for everyone, for his friends becoming grandparents, for um my kids' teachers that were having babies. Like it was just so precious. And the way that he got to be strong at this was the way that she taught him. And it was very natural because she wasn't an educator, she was teaching crocheting. So she would sit down next to him, she would look at his blanket, and she would think to herself, what is the one thing that I could teach right now? One thing that I could teach right now that would help Peter be a stronger crocheter, not what can I do to fix this blanket. So it was really zooming in on certain areas and getting really good at those areas and also naming strengths. So this is how the conversation often would go. My aunt would sit down next to my dad, and my dad would be like, take a look at this blanket. It's in the shape of Texas. And my aunt would respond with, Yeah, but look at right here in the blanket. Right here, you were counting your stitches, and so that he knew what his strengths were. That's great. Because sometimes when we're writing, we're always on the lookout for our mistakes, but are never quite sure of what foundation should I stand on. What strengths do I have that I can step off of?

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

And then she would pick one thing. So maybe while it's still in the shape of Texas, there's a couple of holes in it. And she will just teach him how to fix holes, but she won't do it to his blanket. She'll have her own materials and say, here's what it looks like. Here are the steps to fix a hole. One, two, three, four, five.

Jami 30:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Now you try it. Let's practice those steps with each of those holes. He got stronger and stronger at that through practice. And then the next time they work together, maybe they'll work on how to shape the blanket. So that's how I believe teaching writers to become stronger writers is not about fixing. It's about giving, zooming in on the most important thing, thinking about that writer first. What is this writer most ready for? And then being really specific.

Sara 31:37

I love that. Yeah. That would be a great way for a critique group, or if you're reading somebody else's material and helping them, I think it might be hard for us to do that for ourselves because we don't know what our strengths are. But if you have somebody else reading your material, that would be a good way. Focus on just one thing at a time and not correct it for them, but guide them into it. I think that's great. Some great examples.

Jami 32:05

Yeah. Yeah. I love that example. It's so sweet. So I was going to ask you, what do you see the biggest mistake writers making? And I guess I can. I'll ask that and then I have a follow-up. Is there one big thing? Like me, I use commas like condiments. I just sprinkle them about. Yeah, they're just I just sprinkle them about, see where they land. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

What I find to be the most common and often, and I am always asset-based first. Here's your strength. Here's a next step for you. Because you've got this strength, you're ready to do this. But what in my head makes me loco is when I see a comma splice. Like when we have two independent clauses connected by a comma, all you have to do is put a little dot above that comma and it's a semicolon and it's it works.

unknown 33:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

But that's, I think, my pet peeve because I see it all the time. And for example, my husband on say Facebook, I'd write something and he'd respond with a comma splice. And I'm like, if you do that ever again, I will unfriend you and block you.

Sara 33:28

It's like that meme about somebody's always leaving their clothes on the floor and somebody's always putting them in a hamper, and these two types of people marry each other. Yeah, exactly.

Jami 33:37

Exactly. I remember when my critique partner, who is she is an editor, she it was during this whole, it was like an entire summer. I joined this critique group, I had a manuscript, and they like just ripped it apart. And I've told this story a million times. But one week I got hit for sentence fragments. I went home and fixed them, then I got hit for run on sentences. And so it was just like it was never ending. And but she called me one day and she was like, pull up your manuscript. And so I did, and she's see right here. And I said, Yeah, she's that is a comma splice, and that is really bad. Like it was like she was telling me, like almost like giving me some sort of like birds and bees talk, good girls don't, and kind of thing. I was like, okay, like she scared me with the whole comma splice thing. But yeah, I am that much better at that one than I am anything else because she kind of scared me. So it must be a an editor thing, a grammar person thing. Yeah. So if that's the biggest mistake, what do you think? What's the thing they struggle with the least? Capitalization, whatever. It could be just to give us some positives. What is something we do good? We do good. There you go. There's some good grammar for you. Yes, we do, yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Yeah, I think authors make me jealous with their art, the way they can artfully choose just the right word, just the right follow up sentence. Just the I just read Theo of Golden as much as that book moved me, because we see what kindness can do in the world, it also stopped and held my heart at some of the ways that this author put words together. I think there's just something so epically beautiful when, especially when I'm like, I just never thought of it that way.

Jami 35:44

Love that. And I believe that grammar can, which this is a little unfortunate for me, but I do believe that grammar can make that sentence even it's a fantastic sentence with the proper punctuation and just doing it just the right way, doing a complex compound or whatever, can just make it even better. That is what is that is what has been so fascinating to me about learning to write later in life, is that just the way the English language and grammar can be used to make things just sing, really.

Sara 36:23

Yeah. I have a one of my the books that I read that really impacted me when I was like, I think in junior high, it had this opening paragraph, but it was, I think it was either one or two sentences. And so it was long and complex, but I loved it. And I and it was and it you didn't trip over it. And that's one of the things that I get back from my editors sometime is can we break this into two sentences or can you make this shorter, snappier? And sometimes I'm like, no, it needs that, it needs that flow. But that comes, I think, with time. Yeah.

Jami 36:58

Well, and knowing your characters too. Your characters are not in your historicals, they're not going to be snappy and sassy, like my characters are.

Sara 37:08

Yeah, yeah. They're not communicating with emojis, that's for sure. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Let's see. I had another question about oh, so if somebody sits down and they're looking over their manuscript and they've got to the point where they are working on the grammar, is there something you would recommend they tackle first? Do you have like a triage that we can do, or does it depend on each manuscript?

SPEAKER_01 37:30

I think it depends on each manuscript and being able to self-identify, maybe going back to your style guide or self-identify those things that are your usual suspects. You know what I mean? Your usual yes, I do cleanups and putting them into a checklist and just looking back for those. I tend to write repetitively to say the same thing on different pages. And my books, like I said, are for educators, they're basically how-tos and to be saying the same thing in each how-to, I it's just repetitive. So I think it's find our Achilles heels, because we definitely all have more than one, search for that, but I also just want to say something that I think will add a little, I don't know, reality to being a writer. Our grammar book. So I wrote instructional practices in it. Tim, grammar guru Yoda, knows more about grammar than I think I will ever know. He went back into our book, reread this manuscript more than one time, and corrected any grammar that I didn't catch for my parts. And then it went to copy edit. And it had lots of grammar changes that were needed.

Jami 39:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

So I think it's also to be like a little kinder to ourselves.

Jami 39:15

Yeah, I was gonna say that's encouraging. Yeah, that is encouraging. Yeah, I love that meme that says, I want to be as persistent as the grammar mistakes that me, my copy editor, five rounds of edits and my arc readers missed kind of thing.

Sara 39:31

I was just thinking as you were saying that about the pressure of releasing a book on grammar. I don't know that I could do that because I'd be so worried about the mistakes. I'd be like, I can't have any mistakes in this, but something always slips through.

Jami 39:42

And something did. You gotta love it. You gotta love it. You gotta keep you humble. That's uh for Tim, he was probably in the fatal position.

Sara 39:55

So let's see, I had something else I was gonna ask you about. Oh, just the changes in what is acceptable in grammar. There's certain things, certain rules that seem to have gone out of favor. The Oxford comma. Yeah, I am for the Oxford comma all the time. Yeah, I'm too. So like with grammar, I feel like grammar is getting less, like the trend is to have less punctuation. I think that's a trend. Is there any do you agree with that or is that just me seeing things?

SPEAKER_01 40:25

No, I think you might be right. I just want to refer to a part in my book that I literally listed out and compared grammar expectations from the 16th century through the 21st century.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

Oh, wow. That's going to be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Let me just read the 16th century. Nature has with a motherly tenderness observed this that the action she has enjoined us for our necessity. Okay, that's all I'm gonna read from there. It doesn't sound like it is, it's just not it. Yeah, a string of words, yeah. Totally. And also the words in here that were most important to this writer were capitalized. Oh, yeah, that's true. So let me go to the 21st century. One of the things I've been taught by Native American elders is the importance of patience, of waiting to do things when the time is right. So I know that's many hundreds of years, but grammar is evolving. And yes, maybe it's some less punctuation. Like I think the comma before the and in a compound sentence will go the way of the buffalo because I don't see it very often in published writing, although it is in grammar standards. I think that there will be uh changes grammatically that come from texting. Yeah.

unknown 42:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

You know, for my website, I just asked my designer to do what they call schema, which I wasn't even sure what that was for anybody else who's unsure what that is. It basically is getting the language that people will say into their phone instead of typing into Google or other search engines, collecting that language and then using that as a layer within the website for people to guide themselves or find themselves there, where it used to be like search engine optimization words. Yeah, now it's looking at at another level at what people say. So I think that type of grammar is also going to have a greater effect on our evolution.

Sara 42:59

True, because we do speak a lot more into our phones, dictation type communication.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

And I also think that my pet peeve of the commasplace is going to become so frequently used that it's not going to be something that it will become something accessible, not not for me.

unknown 43:22

Yeah.

Jami 43:23

You are not an agnostic when it comes to the commas. Well, this has been fascinating and just so good. I've really enjoyed it and I've learned some stuff and I feel better about a few things. And so that is really great. Tell people where they can find your book, not your granny's grammar. Is that the that's the right not your granny's grammar? Sure is not your granny's grammar. I think that not just for educators, but it it would be something that would be beneficial, correct? Yes, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

Especially there's the fourth part of the book him wrote down in ways that we can all understand what to know about grammar and how to use it. And then he also went ahead, and I think this is the cutest thing, he got a dry erase board for his basement and his sons, who are anywhere from fourth grader to eighth grader, took videos of him teaching some of the harder grammatical concepts. I think it would be useful for so many. You can find it on my website, which is pattymage.org. And it's Patty with a Y, not an I, because Patty with an I is a famous skateboarder from we'll have that link in the show notes.

Sara 44:46

Yeah. Thank you. Well, thanks for being here today. It's been great. And we will have the link in the show notes. And also don't forget our sponsor for this podcast, Bellum. You can find a link for that in the show notes as well. We'll see everybody next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.