They are those little lines that use their influence...To help a sentence make more sense!

Good Day Everyone!  Yet another fabulously snowy gray day in Wisconsin.  I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing of Spring in everyone else’s back yard though.  I am simply pea-green with envy.  (Snarl.)

 Lovely bloggers!  Please check your gravatars and make sure there is within them a direct link to your blog.  As of late I have had many wonderful new followers sign on but whenst (?) upon clicking your avatar to go and visit your own fabulous blog, I get a dead end or merely links to the blogs that you follow.  I believe it would just take a trip to your Google profile (or similar ilk) and affixing your blog address under "links”.  Caveat:  The blog link will sometimes work when you leave comments, but not when you are listed as followers.  Anyway, since it is all about networking I thought I would bring it up.  Does anyone else have comments or similar experiences with this?

Okay.  That was tres boring, but I’ve been meaning to bring it up forever, but didn’t because of its tedious nature.

 I know I have waxed and warbled quite a bit about the established pedentry as of late (see:  On Word Count and Other Matters and Debbie Downer and the Dreaded Don'ts ) however, when it comes to punctuation, I shall conform and sign on with zeal. 

 

“Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss is a fabulous read and a joyful romp into the land of punctuation and its misuse at the hands of the uninformed multitudes.  (Of which I must admit to being a previous soldier in the ranks, though an unwitting one.  The worst kind of soldier!)

I struggle with punctuation quite a bit while writing, especially dialogue. I love the colon and semi-colon, and the much-used, beloved dash.   I have long wished to use them with grace and aplomb but have never sought help.  I try them out, but then—unsure, change everything around so I only have to use the period.  And those grammar and punctuation websites are so…yawn.  Stretch.  Where was I?  Oh, yes—cookies! (You get the picture.)

My overuse of the comma has been shameful to the point of gluttony.  The little buggers are like potato chips.  Why have just one when a whole bag is SO much more gratifying?  Why indeed!  Don’t even get me started on the ellipsis…

With chapters entitled “The Tractable Apostrophe”, “That’ll Do, Comma”  and “Cutting a Dash” this book delivers the goods
in an amusing, entertaining way and will have you guffawing out loud and finding grammatical errors everywhere you look. 
If you get through the preface and find beating in your heart a newfound zeal to master the art of punctuation, this book is for you. (And it  does make one feel so good to know one is perfecting an art so few care to learn—like hurling.  (The kind with a broom. And ice.)

Its’ never too late to learn something new.  (I did that on purpose.)

 Please do check out the new offering by our lovely blogmate Hart Johnson.  I look forward to the read and best of luck to you, Hart! 

The Begonia Bribe: 2nd in the Garden Society Cozy Mystery series by Alyse Carlson (aka: Hart Johnson).

                                                                                     

Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment … A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman —and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all.  But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb.         

   I’ll close with an observation:  Has anyone noticed the new sandwich McDonalds is touting on their billboards everywhere?  The McWrap.  Seriously?  Say it with me people. 

"Mick-Crap."   Guess who was absent from the boardroom THAT day?

And what does one sandwich in between those two buns?

 ~Just Jill

(Extra points for anyone who can tell me where the title of my blog came from...)