Contact Us

We want to hear from you…

We have added Web-based mail services so anyone can write to us, from anywhere. We hope this helps everyone. A good website is one that never stops improving, so we listen to visitors and try to keep making the Tameri Guide for Writers better and better.

Edits Happen

The Tameri Guide for Writers consists of more than 130 Web pages, which print to more than 400 single-spaced pages. Unfortunately, any work this long will contain some errors. We appreciate that a guide to English should be perfect; we also know perfection is unlikely. When you send a suggestion, please include the Web address (URL) for the Tameri Guide page that contains the possible error.

One of the greater challenges we face is that style guides and language references change. Worse, the references sometimes offer contradictory guidelines and “rules” for writers and editors. We tend to favor guides and references that address writing for general audiences (the “mass market” readers) instead of academic or specialty audiences. This means we favor the Associated Press guidelines over other style guides and publication manuals. Before assuming we are “wrong” about a topic, consider that the Tameri Guide for Writers serves mass market creative writers first, academic audiences second.

How to Contact Us

General questions and sugguestions can be posted to our Facebook page. Unfortunatley, junk mail “bots” have made the contact form problematic. To contact us, please write to Susan or Scott at Tameri (you know the rest).

https://www.facebook.com/tameriguide

We Happen to be Right Sometimes

Grammar rules are not laws

Many of the “corrections” we receive are actually incorrect or matters of personal style. The Modern Language Association, the Associated Press, and other organizations are updated on a regular basis. When there is a conflict between sources, we have to select one as the “right” answer for this guide. That does not mean the guideline we offer via the Tameri Guide for Writers is the only answer.

One source of confusion has been our use of the semicolon (;). A semicolon joins independent (“main”) clauses. Several visitors have wrongly suggested such sentences are “run-on” and should be edited. No, the clauses relate closely and we believe using semicolons indicates clearly that the clauses should be thought of together. We also use commas more liberally than many current texts suggest. This might be because instead of misusing commas it is easier to omit them. Most English usage guides are moving towards fewer “mandatory” uses for commas.

If you do have a complex correction or suggestion, it is helpful if you include an academic source for the correction. Also, you should include the Web page URL from the Tameri Guide that needs to be updated.