@Nez: Glad you stopped by! Yep, feeling comfortable and relaxed with the guidelines and rules of grammar are essential to enjoying writing – and even reading. If you want to form thoughts and phrases using the written word that mirror natural spoken language you do need to understand grammar and punctuation to approximate its pacing and delivery. I’ll put Lederer’s book on my (long and still growing) wishlist!

I just found your site via (I think) Barbara’s, and from there, Hunter’s — it’s kinda interesting the online degrees of separation out there.

Anyway, I cannot remember the specific title, but waaay back in high school, when writing certainly was more of a chore than a pleasure, I happened to decide to check out a grammar book from the school library.

Over the next few days, I devoured it from beginning to end, and for whatever other reason — perhaps I was simply ready — I was able to come away from it with a newfound appreciation for phrases, clauses, commas and semicolons.

From then on, I had a better comprehension of books, and appreciated things like Richard Lederer’s The Miracle of Language.

Like I said, it’s been a long time, but that’s a book I’d recommend checking out — not sure if it would help one develop a writing style, but it certainly gives one a new appreciation of language.