Because of the popularity of my grammar and punctuation topics here, I’ve decided to devote one post every week or so to a grammar or punctuation rule. As always, I’ll verify the grammar rule from a reputable source, but please feel free to comment or disagree on the rule.

I’m also doing this because the ultimate goal of this blog is to help you build Web site content for your site. My belief is that you need to take care of grammar and punctuation problems in your content in order to maintain the professionalism of your site.

However, I also want to emphasize that just because we have this left-brain grammar topic once a week, we’re not going to freeze up on our posts or comments because we’re so worried about grammar. Grammar is a left-brain activity. In order to write content, you have to free up your creativity and not worry about grammar. Editing comes later . . . much later.

Blogs, forums, personal e-mail, e-mail discussion groups, or chats are not the places to worry about grammar rules. Creative writing–the very act of writing–is also not the place . . . at least not at first. You need to allow yourself to write and create first.

In any event, we’re going to devote a frequent post to grammar, because it is so important to the professionalism of a site. We just don’t want to get all left-brained in a right-brained blog!

Now, let’s talk about tips for using that. Some writers or editors believe it’s important to remove as many instances of that as possible. However, in many cases, the sentences make more sense if you use that. According to Woe Is I by Patricia T. O’Conner (Riverhead Books), some verbs may sound smoother to the ear if you use that, verbs such as “think, say, hope, believe, find, feel, and wish.”

For example, Joe hoped that Bennie would write the invitations. (Vs.: Joe hoped Bennie would write the invitations.)

O’Conner acknowledges that you may or may not agree with this. It’s simply a matter of taste, and the sentence is correct either way.

She also cautions to be sure to use that to make the meaning of a sentence more clear. Her example is:

“Johnny found the old violin hidden in a trunk in his attic wasn’t a real Stradivarius.”

If you don’t use that after found, you’d think that the point of the sentence is that Johnny found an old violin, as opposed to the violin not being a real Stradivarius. You wouldn’t discover the real point until the very end of the sentence.

Enough about that. Back to the right brain. It’s much more fun there!

Robin