Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Sunshine: The Way You Live

Title: The Way You Live

Author: meryruaid

Summary: [no score – will not be added to final score]

I decided not to judge our summary, since it is hard to judge a summary when it doesn't follow the traditional format. However, I do like that you have succinctly shown us the direction of the story, and the utilisation of rhetorical question is a great way to keep the reader engaged. Well done! 

Grammar: 1.5/5

Okay, so you asked me to focus on this section, and I will happily do so. In short, your grammar and punctuation definitely need work – but don't worry; once you know the rules, you'll be able to fix them up in no time. English grammar is incredibly complex, so that's why we're here to help.

Let's start with the basics: capital letters. The only times you should be capitalising the start of a word is when the word is the start of a sentence, or when it is a proper noun (such as a name). You tend to randomly capitalise words in the middle of your sentence, and the start of your sentences also tend to lack capital letters. Additionally, a lot of the time, you don't capitalise the names of characters – and character names are definitely proper nouns that require capitalisation.

Next, read our sentences aloud. You tend to lack commas when they are required, so I recommend reading it aloud and looking out for moments where you need to pause for the sentence to be fluent. Those pauses, chances are, require punctuation. Also, make sure your verbs are presented in the correct format. An example of both these errors is in the following sentence:

Cutting her lips she clean up the fog appearing in her eyes.

First of all, you need the comma after the introductory part of that sentence. Secondly, you need to resolve the subject-verb disagreement, and it should look more like:

Cutting her lips, she cleaned up the fog in her eyes.

Also, be careful that you're not mixing up the spelling of some words. Sometimes, by spelling them incorrectly, you change the meaning. For example:

Three boys were ridding bike.

Ridding means 'to get rid of' (to throw away). It should be:

Three boys were riding bikes.

Now, let's talk tenses. You occasionally flip from past tense to present tense. For example:

It is Khizer Murtaza. [it is = present tense]

She thought it and began to cry. [thought/began = past tense]

You need to choose one and stick to it. Additionally, when you're writing, you flip from first person to third person within paragraphs with no warning whatsoever. For example, in the following excerpt in the exact same chapter (within a paragraph of one another), when you were referring to Eman, you wrote:

Is it possible that he forgot me so easily? [me = first person]

She suddenly breaks into pieces. [she = third person]

You need to keep it consistent. If you are going to switch, make sure the reader is made aware of the switch.

Next, punctuation and dialogue. You should not have gaps between the punctuation, inverted commas, and the words. For example:

"I like him as a teacher and nothing else . " I reply with a sight shrug.

There are a few errors in that above example. You wrote 'sight' instead of 'slight', you're using incorrect punctuation, and the formatting is incorrect. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). It should be: