Bronte Follower: Blog

I got a bit ahead of myself with this story, mostly because I'm trying to balance four concurrent stories in the Beth Universe and not doing a perfect job of it. The gist is that I've had to add quite a bit to Chapter 12, which is uploaded and will be posted on the morning of the 31st (NYC time).

In the past few weeks, I've seen this story's rating drop from 7.96 to 7.57 despite only a very small number of new votes being added. That suggests that some readers have changed their votes negatively (unless those new votes were very negative). If my supposition is correct, I'd appreciate hearing what has caused readers to change their opinions. Please feel free to respond directly to me or leave a comment with the story.

The next four chapters (20-23) of Las Amadas and The Team are in the queue and are scheduled to post in the evenings (NYC time) of the 27th (Wednesday), 30th, 4th, and 7th. Unless I run into unexpected problems, I'll keep the posting schedule to Wednesday and Saturday of each week. On the 9th, the 11th chapter of Smythe's story will be posted. I have no clue how frequently _A New Tree_ will get subsequent installments, although I hope for at least a chapter weekly. If I can get the fourth chapter of the sequel to _Sandy_ written soon, I might post it four days after the queued chapter of _A New Tree_. I'd like to alternate those two stories between sequential chapters of LA and TT, but....

Thank you to all who provided feedback to my previous post (Grammarly and "couple"); I was pleasantly surprised by so many taking the time to respond. I received constructive arguments and explanations from many, the upshot of which is that Grammarly is correct, although a COUPLE OF respondents pointed out that the construction lacking the preposition is now colloquially accepted, so I might be justified in skipping the preposition in a character's speech.

To summarize a COUPLE OF responses, "couple" is a noun in the usage and the following noun (whether raisins or girls) should be part of a prepositional phrase describing "couple." The phrase is no different from others like "horn of plenty" or "hall of fame;" that is, neither "horn plenty" nor "hall fame" makes any sense.

For you writers, particularly those who use some sort of grammatical check on your efforts, I have a question.

Do you find that the program, whatever it is (I use Grammarly, obviously), insists that you insert "of" when writing things such as "a couple questions?" (I wish I could show you the red underline Grammarly put under "couple.")

I've been thinking about that, and it makes no sense to me. If I replace "couple" with "two," Grammarly objects not at all to "two questions." Nor does it object to "a few questions." That is, it does not insist on "two of questions" or "a few of questions." It seems to me that this is due to some holdover of ancient origin, and I think it's long past time that we abandon it along the roadside with the many other English aspects we've jettisoned as English has evolved. And I'm a reactionary purist when it comes to English!