What Writers Need To Get Better, Says Ursula K. Le Guin, Is To Understand Grammar

“If I said, ‘Hey your syntax is a little ‘wonky,” they didn’t know what syntax was. And this makes it kind of hard to discuss writing if you don’t have the vocabulary of the very elements of your work – which is how the English language is put together, and what constitutes a sentence and a non-sentence and so on. And they were really afraid of semicolons! The semicolon struck terror into the hearts of many grown women.”