Grammar Girl: What’s your favorite word and why?
Stephanie Perkins: I can’t tell you my favorite because I use it for plenty of secret, password-related things. Ha! But count me as one of the many, many rain-loving writers who have felt ecstatic upon learning about the existence of “petrichor.”
GG: What’s a word you dislike (either because it’s overused or misused) and why?
SP: I would be glad to see all of these words and phrases retired: “adulting,” “nothing burger,” “dumpster fire,” “amazeballs,” “disruptive” (when describing technology), and “I was today years old.” Sports metaphors in business conversations also make me cringe.
GG: What word will you always misspell?
SP: These two: “receive” and “receipt.” I just misspelled them trying to type them here. That “ei” gets me every time.
GG: What word (or semblance of a word) would you like to see added to the dictionary? Why?
SP: I wrote a horror novel, The Woods Are Always Watching, that largely takes place in a forest at night. It was maddening to come up with new ways of saying, “It was still dark.” I’m pleased with the solutions I came up with, but I would gladly take a few more synonyms.
GG: Any grammar pet peeves we should know about?
SP: I’m hardcore team Oxford comma.
GG: To what extent does grammar play a role in character development and voice?
SP: It plays a crucial role in both. Every single choice an author makes influences how the reader will interpret the world being created for them.
GG: Do you have a favorite quote or passage from an author you’d like to share?
SP: From M.T. Anderson’s The Game of Sunken Places: “The nursery, however, was cozy. Lumps of coal were burning in the grate. The room was warm. Downstairs, Prudence was practicing the piano. She played some hair-raising sonata. It sounded like a riverboat captain in love.”
When I read that paragraph fifteen years ago, I threw the book across the room. I was envious that I would never write a simile as funny and perfect as “like a riverboat captain in love.”
The first sentence of that book is also tremendous: “The woods were silent, other than the screaming.” Grab any Anderson novel, and it’s bound to contain at least a dozen sentences that will make me writhe with admiration and jealousy.
GG: What grammar, wording, or punctuation problem did you struggle with this week?
SP: I keep a list of words I overuse and search my document for them after every draft. This week, I discovered that a ludicrous amount of “actually” had crept into my book. What a weak word! It took an entire afternoon to slice the unnecessary ones out.
Pick up your copy of Overdue, the latest novel from Stephanie Perkins. You can find it on Amazon, Bookshop or wherever your favorite books are sold.