2 Basic

Discussions at a Beginner level

Menu key

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As you may know, I’m a bit of a keyboard kinda guy. If I can find a way to type a command, instead of mousing it, I’ll do it. Well, with the advent of the 104 key keyboard back in Sept of 1994, when Microsoft upgraded the standard 101 key keyboard, a few new keys were added…but no one pointed them out: two Windows keys and a single Menu key. We’re going to cover the Menu key in this post, but don’t worry, we’ll cover the Windows key in a later one.

Usually found a bit to the right of the space bar, there is a new key that is rather useful—the Context Menu key. It’s supposed to look like a little drop-down menu, a box with horizontal lines on it. Sometimes it has an arrow on it (like the picture), but some keyboards have a different version with no arrow.

When you type that key, you get the same thing as if you right-click* the mouse—a menu that changes every time depending on where the focus is. I haven’t found much use for it when I’m writing (in Word), because mostly I’m just typing copy, but when I’m analysing data (in Excel), it gets used quite a bit. Just a quick ‘shift-space menu-i’ will insert a whole row, and ‘ctrl-space menu-d’ will delete a column. Quick and easy.

It may be a bit awkward at first…having to reach down past the “?” key…but you’ll probably find that the more you use it, the more you’ll find other ways to make it work better for you. If you’re curious, just tap it whenever you might be reaching for the mouse. The command you want might be right there waiting for you.

*When I say “right-click” I’m showing a prejudice. I’ve had to support many engineers who were left handed, so for them a “right-click” involves clicking on the left button of the mouse. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten used to everything being backwards, but I just want to acknowledge the difference. Thanks!

Story Elements (Characters)

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Characters are important, but how important? Well, if you have no characters, then there is no story, and according to some folks, they are more important than even plot:

“An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players… Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.”—Chuck Jones, an animator of such characters as the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote

That’s pretty important, but who do you include? Populating your story with people who feel real will help humanise it, so consider what roles you will need:

  • The Hero (protagonist), often the POV character, needs to show courage and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good in the face of danger and adversity.
  • The Villain (antagonist) opposes the Hero, either physically, intellectually, or emotionally, and he doesn’t need to be a single person. The government, a crowd, even the environment could be the villain. He often has a helper: The Tempter.
  • The Tempter works in the shadows, manipulating the Hero and trying to convince him to join the dark side.
  • The Sidekick, the Hero’s helper, is an unconditionally loving friend. No matter how bad things get, the Sidekick thinks the Hero is right—Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.
  • The Mentor acts as the Hero’s conscience, guiding him toward the right path…guiding only, not controlling. The Hero has to make his own choices—Gandalf in the Hobbit stories.
  • The Sceptic doesn’t believe in the Theme, he doesn’t support the Hero’s goal, and he doesn’t mind getting in the way. He has his own agenda—Han Solo in Star Wars.
  • Love Interests add much to the fullness of a story, whether boyfriend, girlfriend, or even a pet animal of some sort. This character can add a whole subplot (or even the main plot…romance stories?). Their relationship isn’t necessarily solid, as the villain is constantly interfering, trying to distract the Hero from his goal.
  • Finally the Spear Carriers, bit parts, filled in by folks who walk on, give their lines, and walk off, never to be seen again. Just one of the masses adding to casts of thousands. Still important, but mostly as information givers. Let them have their moment in the spotlight…then move on.

Not all those roles will be needed in all stories, but any character you have can be lumped into two types: Emotional and Logical. Emotional characters follow their gut, often acting before thinking, and help the Hero by making a decision that a thinking person would never have even considered…and often fail, spectacularly, by leaping without looking.

On the other hand, Logical characters plan ahead, look for common sense solutions, and answer questions with facts. They are useful, but the Hero may find that the head needs to listen to the heart to work at its best.

Keep a good balance, and your story folks will not only seem real, but also be talked for years to come.

Coordinating Conjunctions

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From the name, you can guess that conjunctions connect things (con=with, junction=to join). There are a few different kinds of conjunctions—we will discuss Subordinating and Correlative Conjunctions in later posts. For now, let’s look at how Coordinating conjunctions connect ideas that are equal with each other (co=together with, ordinate=put in order). There are seven basic Coordinating Conjunctions in English: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. You can remember them by their initials: Fanboys. The things that are connected together can be as simple as a single word (noun, verb, etc.), as involved as a phrase, or as complicated as a whole clause (sentence). Why do we want to use conjunctions? To connect ideas, to establish a relationship between them.

Coordinating conjunction examples:

  • Words: “Dick and Jane ate the sweet but spicy soup.” In this example, we connect two nouns (the children) as doing the same thing together, but we also connect two adjectives (the flavours of the soup) in a contradictory manner.
  • Phrases: “The rabbit had to pick to run into the bush or down the hole, so he could escape.” Here we present two prepositional phrases as alternate options, either of which is valid. We also have a clause added on describing the result of the action.
  • Predicates: “The crook ran around the corner yet was caught by the police.” Now we have two predicates detailing the crook’s fate with an unexpected connection.
  • Clauses: “A violent gust of wind swept up the street, for it is in London that our scene lies.” Here we tie two full sentences together in an explanatory manner, attaching additional information.
  • Clauses: “The commotion did not cease, nor did it decrease in the slightest bit.” This one has two more full sentences connected in a negative sense, similar to ‘or’ but backwards.

One point to remember: if the items that are being connected are clauses (full sentences), then there needs to be a comma just before the conjunction—if not, then no comma should be there.

As you can see, using conjunctions to connect ideas improves the flow, one idea leading into another with a specific relationship.

Basic Layout of a Book (inside)

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In a previous post we delved into what is needed for the cover of a book, so now we are going to examine the inside. Besides the brilliant content you’ve created, there is the Front Matter and Back Matter, but that’s just what is there. In this post we are going to consider how it appears.

Running Headers and Footers are at the top and bottom of each page, outside your content. The Header often has the author’s name or book title on one side and the section or chapter name on the other, while the Footer has the page numbers (centered on the page, or at the outer corners—your decision on that), but it’s not a requirement to follow that pattern. The main reason they are there is so when readers are flipping through your book, they know exactly what’s being covered in each section.

Page numbers are important for reader’s to find what they need, but remember they are different for the different sections. The Front Matter has Roman numerals—the main section uses Arabic numerals. Odd numbers are on the right hand side (the recto)—even on the left (the verso). Page 1 is always the first page of content, and because chapters typically start on the right side, the left page just in front of each chapter may be blank…if it is, make certain it is entirely blank.

You want to make it easy for your readers, so pick a good, clean font. No need to be fancy here. Also make certain your line spacing is comfortable, anywhere from 1.15 to 1.25 is good enough for standard fonts. If you have a particularly tall font, it may need more, so just make the leading 5 to 10 points larger than the font size. Make certain your justification is appropriate for your content: non-fiction, fully justified; fiction, left justified. Paragraph indents and spacing also differs depending on the topic: non-fiction, no indent, minor spacing between; fiction, small indent, no spacing between. The space around your text should be considered, too. Set your margins and gutters wide enough. Especially important is avoiding widows and orphans. Both are bad—white space is good.

Obviously the content is up to you, but what you put in front of and behind your creation will be covered in another post.

Symbols sometimes used

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I say sometimes used because there are some strange ones available that will most likely never be used, but just in case, we’re going to cover them as well. Some of the more popular symbols are the copyright and trademark (and registered trademark), not used very often, but every book should have the copyright symbol on the copyright page, so it may be important to know how to put it there.

As with many things in Windows, there are a few different ways to do it. If you have AutoCorrect turned on (which you probably do unless you intentionally turned it off), you can type “(c)”, and it will ‘correct’ it to the copyright symbol. On the other hand, if you prefer to do things by yourself, you can always type Ctrl-Alt-C.

Similarly, you can get the trademark and registered trademark symbols with “(tm)” and “(r)” respectively…or Ctrl-Alt-T and Ctrl-Alt-R. Either way works fine. (For those of you who prefer mousing around, those symbols, and many others, can be found on the Insert Tab, Symbols Group, Symbol pulldown.)

Accents

A few other ‘symbols’ sometimes used are actually just accented letters, such as the ‘e’ in “café”. Again, there are a few ways to get those into your ms. I find the easiest way is to combine the accent with the regular letter by first typing the accent with Ctrl, then the letter. For example, to type “café” I would type “caf”, then hold Ctrl and type what looks like the appropriate accent mark, in this case the apostrophe, then release Ctrl and hit the letter ‘e’.

When you type the Ctrl-apostrophe, nothing appears, but when you hit the ‘e’, you get both! All you have to do is keep track of which accent mark you want. We wanted the acute accent (the one pointing up to the right) this time. If we had wanted the grave accent (pointing down…to a grave), we’d use the backtick mark (found under the tilde ‘~’ in the upper left of most keyboards).

The circumflex is found above the ‘6’, so you’d type Ctrl-Shift-6 to get that one. Putting the tilde above ‘n’ is done the same way: Ctrl-Shift-tilde (it’s above the backtick we used for the grave accent, but with Shift, we get the tilde). Also there is the cedilla…the little dangly thing hanging down below the letter ‘c’ in some words: façade for example. It sorta looks like a comma, so that’s what you’d use, typing Ctrl-comma then ‘c’. Finally, to get an umlaut (two horizontal dots over the letter), you’d use the symbol that looks like two vertical dots: the colon! Ctrl-Shift-colon followed by ‘o’ gives ‘ö’, just what you’d need if your character were a German scientist (or whatever).

As you experiment, you’ll find other key combinations that make various accented letters. Have fun and play around. You may decide that you need an international cast of characters, so you can use all those neat letters.

Basic Grammar Terms Everyone Should Know

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Again, as I dislike reading dictionaries, I will not be presenting an alphabetical list of terms, rather I’m going to go step by step from top to bottom explaining as I go. I will underline the new terms and give relevant definitions in parens. We’ll start with Grammar, which is nothing more than a set of rules dealing with syntax (how words are combined) and structure (how words are built up). For now, we’ll assume the top of the syntax pile is the sentence (largest standalone unit of grammar), which can be simple (contains one clause), compound (contains at least two independent clauses), complex (contains at least one independent AND one dependent clause), or compound-complex (contains two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause). Whew! What a mouthful, and we didn’t even mention relative clauses.

Clauses:

Each clause contains a subject (indicates what the clause is about) and a predicate (contains verbs, objects, and phrases used by the verb). Clauses are built up by combining phrases (small group of words). Words (combinations of sounds that communicate a meaning) consist of a single morpheme or a combination of morphemes. Morphemes (the smallest unit of meaning) are either free (can stand alone) or bound (have to be connected to another morpheme).

So we’ve now gone from largest to smallest and still haven’t covered the good stuff. Everyone likes to talk about the parts of speech, so here goes. There are two types of nouns (used to name or identify things): mass (can’t be counted) and countable (can be counted), and they have friends: pronouns (point to a nearby noun). Verbs (describe an action or state of being) have two types: transitive (needs a direct object) and intransitive (doesn’t have a direct object). Adjectives (modify a noun or a pronoun) and adverbs (modify other parts: verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs) round out the basic list. With all these parts, we can build simple sentences from individual clauses.

Combining clauses:

Now we get to the more involved sentences by combining clauses using conjunctions (connectors between words, phrases, and clauses). Three types here: coordinating (connecting two or more ideas with equal emphasis and importance), subordinating (connecting two or more ideas giving one less emphasis and lower importance), and correlative (pairs of words or phrases joining ideas equally). These are so important that we have entire posts dedicated to each: Coordinating, Subordinating, and Correlative.

Just a few more items to finish up with. Verbs have tense (indication of when action occurs), showing past, present, or future. Both Verbs and Nouns have number (marking quantity) showing singular or plural (only those two available in English!). Then there’s voice (manner of expression) with both active (actor of verb identified) and passive (actor of verb not identified, either implied or assumed).

Well, that covers just about an entire semester’s worth of instruction. If you need more info, two websites out there that I can recommend are the Online Writing Lab at Purdue and Grammar Girl.