Writing and Publishing News

What writing or publishing attribute are you asking Santa for this year? Would you like to be more skilled in character development, have a larger vocabulary or be more daring when it comes to promoting yourself or your book? Do you need a larger measure of writing talent or publishing know-how? Or maybe you should ask Santa for a helping of proficiency in the area of grammar and punctuation.

I receive way too many emails and manuscripts riddled with careless errors. Sure, we all make mistakes. We neglect to use spellcheck, miss obvious grammatical problems and use the wrong punctuation. It happens to everyone. My gripe is with those who profess to be writers/authors, but who can’t (or don’t bother to) spell simple words, insert commas and use an appropriate sentence structure.

Here’s an example of some of the emails I receive: “i hope yo u can help me. i want too shear my storey and write a book – to wake up the hole world to something that will shock them. this is a uniqke story unlike that another. i can’t tel l you abut it yet for copywrite reasons. i’m shure you understand. but i can say that it will make you loose sleep from worrey and do something about it. plees contact me.”

There are numerous problems here—problems that most of you reading this would not make. Or would you? Here are some common mistakes that you might not notice in the paragraph above (or your own writing):

• Leaving 2 spaces after the period. It is now 1 space after all punctuation.
• Dangling the em dash between two words. The em dash is one long dash that connects two words. (See an example above.)
• Neglecting to correct the rest of a sentence after making a change.
• Using the wrong word—hole instead of whole or; loose instead of lose or too instead of to, for example.
• Lack of clarity.
• Problems with tense and person.
• Less than adequate transitions from one thought to another.
• Muddy writing.

I don’t profess to be the world’s greatest grammarian or writer, for that matter. But I try to come across as professional in my writing the first time and every time. And I suggest that you do, too.

For lessons in grammar and punctuation read Chapter 9 of The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. You may also get a lot out of my article, “What Can a Good Editor Do for You?” http://www.matilijapress.com/articles/write_goodeditor.htm

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 6:18 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.