All Comments on 'Attack of the Sand Squid'

Todger65 seems to be a popular editor, or maybe the only one regularly available, but he doesn't seem to know many of the basic rules of writing, like numbers under 100 need to be written out: "Her aunt was only 43, just under a decade older than herself. That may as well be 30 these days"

That should be "forty-three" and "thirty".

""An eccentric, crazy big sis," she smiled, " - He also doesn't know that people can't "smile" words. Should be a period after "sis" and a capital "S" with "She" and another period after "smiled.'

Re Anon 1: The corrections would have been more help had they been correct. Grade school grammar rules are not inflexible. Ages are almost never spelled out, and "she smiled" is perfectly acceptable as short for "she said with a smile".

In addition to his insistence on writing out ages, which is optional according to most grammarians, the previous Anonymous was equally wrong about the use of the quotation.

Anon claimed that there should have been “a period after "sis" and a capital "S" with "She" and another period after "smiled.'” Even ignoring poor Anon’s failure to use appropriate commas, there are still all sorts of problems with the statement, beginning with the fact that it’s simply incorrect. There was not only no need to place a period after ”sis” and then capitalize “she”— doing so would change the author’s meaning. As written, it is a sentence said with a smile. As Anon wanted to edit it, the sentence was spoken, and then the speaker smiled.

I am curious about the “basic rules of writing” to which Anon refers. Having been a professional editor, I have to ask— would that be the rules in the AP (Associated Press) Style Book? The MLA Style Book (that one’s the Modern Language Association). How about the APA Style Book (American Psychological Association)? I think I have at least one or two others on my shelves as well, including one with British rules, and British spellings. And guess what? They are all different! Unless Anon is referring to the grammar rules he was taught in fifth grade as the basic ones, I’d have to wonder which set of rules he was following (and then I’d still ask where he went for fifth grade!).

This was fun to read as long as it was tongue in cheek & taken with salt. I gave it 4 stars.

Bill S.