JSBձոգչ

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bio	website	jsbangs.com
	location	United States
	age	31
visits	member for	2 years, 7 months
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I have a degree in Linguistics, but I work as a programmer. Most of my expertise about English is self-taught, plus lots of random trivia I've acquired here and there.

This is my favorite EL&U comment ever:

This isn't really a question about English so much as a question about hugs. Source

	4,762 reputation	bio	website	jsbangs.com	visits	member for	2 years, 7 months
1132 badges		location	United States		seen	yesterday

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Jun 15	comment	Is the following allowed under the ungrammatical exceptions in fiction? Who ever told you that your first example was wrong? It absolutely is not wrong, and is in many ways better than your second example.
Jun 11	comment	Wait for the results of writing contest or try other means "How can I tell whether an agent is legit" would be a very good question for Writers.se :).
Jun 11	answered	Wait for the results of writing contest or try other means
Jun 11	comment	Book Plot Sugestions Hi, Lizzy. Unfortunately, this sort of open-ended plot question isn't really what we do here. There are lots of other sites where you could ask stuff like this, but we want questions to have a single focus and an objective answer.
May 27	comment	How best to format a novel written in Markdown @Mussri, yep, your experimentation should be valid universally. In fact, I may put my own templates up someplace public, since they should be usable for nearly everyone.
May 25	comment	Is dialogue in a novel necessary, or just padding? Short answer: dialogue is completely necessary, since dialogue reads completely differently from summary.
May 25	answered	How best to format a novel written in Markdown
May 24	awarded	Enlightened
May 24	awarded	Nice Answer
May 15	comment	How many words in 350 pages typed and double spaced? @Jed, there are lots of examples of long first epic fantasy novels, for sure. But I wouldn't want the OP to think that he should try to send in a 300K monster on his first shot.
May 15	answered	Best Grammar checking software
May 14	comment	How many words in 350 pages typed and double spaced? You've correctly identified the wordcount for epic works from established authors. However, I've been told many times that first books should generally shoot for about 100K words, and that anything over 120K is a hard sell.
Apr 25	answered	Why Use Excessively Short Chapters?
Apr 11	comment	Can a self publishing author use a Pen name/Pseudonym? The name an your Amazon account should be your real name. However, you can put anything you want as the "author name". Amazon will show the author name to people on the site, but it'll write the checks to you.
Apr 10	answered	Can a self publishing author use a Pen name/Pseudonym?
Apr 5	answered	The value of labeling book sections
Mar 31	answered	Must one have a book cover designed before to publisher?
Mar 29	comment	Is it acceptable practice to use contractions in a fictional first person narrative for children? @LaurenIpsum, in spoken language children learn to say the contracted don't before they say do not. I was never aware of this convention with early reader books, but I suspect that it's in place more to avoid having to teach the apostrophe at that young age.
Mar 27	comment	Is it acceptable practice to use contractions in a fictional first person narrative for children? I'm curious: what made you think you shouldn't use contractions? The only writing styles which don't use contractions are extremely formal styles such as academic non-fiction. All fiction writing uses contractions extensively.
Feb 28	awarded	Popular Question