Colons and commas and Semi-Colons, OH MY!!!!

It has been a long time since I was in school and found it essential to have good grammar and punctuation skills. Hence, I have pulled out my trusty copy of Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference. http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Reference-Diana-Hacker/dp/031202455X/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1243211518&sr=11-1

I have re-learned/re-freshed my skills with colons and semi-colons and commas; colons being those pesky things which I use way too often.

Okay, was that right? Is that second half of "equal grammatical rank?"

My real lesson with this book though, has been tense.

About a year ago, I entered one of agent, Nathan Bransford's contests. Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent. Occasionally, this masochistic man will offer to read a bazillion entries of the first "x" number of words of any novel you are working on. I was not one of the winners but I did take another reader's offer of critiquing them and the first thing he said, is that I had two tenses going on.

I thought I had gone in and corrected this, but I knew I had not been thorough enough, so after my character charts were over, I started from word one and began reading the book, sentence by sentence. My first page or so was in present tense, then I slipped (with no good reason, if there ever is one) to past tense.

For some reason, if I can keep my Writer's Reference, right beside my laptop, to keep glancing at, page 39, it becomes clear to my foggy brain.

Now, if I can just do something about run-on sentences, in my blog!!!