The person who inspired the update didn’t comment here. They sent me a toxic anonymous email declaiming my laisez faire (sp?) ways.

Rebecca, I’m with you. I suffered english grammar classes throughout most of my childhood, but who remembers any of that? Dangling participles? Is that dirty?

I just kind of know when things are used incorrectly. I can point it out, but can’t always say why it’s incorrect. And people constantly brought me their papers to edit while I was in college. scary, isn’t it? fools.

So, when is it acceptable to be a grammar and spelling nazi? That’s the question. I like to be a grammar and spelling nazi when clients (who like to yell at me for no reason, except that it makes them feel special) send poorly written business emails. If you’re going to act all superior in an email, you should at least spell things correctly. Regular emails? Blogs? Blog comments? I figure that most of us are trying to write these sort of things while we’re supposed to be doing other things. like, uh, work. So typing quickly is often necessary. You know, so we don’t get busted.

i’m also not so good with the punctuation. i love run on sentences and use commas as decoration. it’s my style — i like the flow without the commas. i’m afraid it will come back to bite me when i submit my ms and agents are like “dude, where are your commas!” let’s hope the writing makes them forget about commas…

1. Spelling ability. If I’m not mistaken, research has tied this explicitly to visual recall of information rather than general intelligence or even overall verbal ability. I’m an outstanding speller — one of the best I’ve ever known — but it’s because I’m extremely visual, not because I am (or am not) smart. So writers shouldn’t beat themselves up if they’re naturally bad spellers – for many people, it’s like being color-blind. And I myself will often make transcription or typing errors if I’m going quickly (“they’re” for “their” etc.). We’re human.

2. Taking pains. I tell my undergraduates that I won’t ever mark off for spelling on a handwritten exam; usually I also explain what I just said about spelling ability not being related to intelligence or understanding. But I also tell them to spell correctly on anything they’re going to type up and hand in to me. In that case, rife misspellings are simply a sign of carelessness, since anyone can either proofread themselves or, better, get a friend who’s wired like me to proofread for them. (I feel no compunctions about this because even if a student is friendless or surrounded by dyslexics, our university has a writing center where the student can get unlimited free help with things like spelling and grammar.) I try to bring home the point that only a few people are naturally good spellers, but that *anyone* can take pains, and if you show you’ve taken pains, the reader is more likely to take you seriously. Also, if this doesn’t seem to register with them, I usually tell them about my experience reading resumes and employment applications in the business world. Every hiring manager I’ve ever known is happy to throw a run-of-the-mill resume in the Reject pile for even one typo, since there are plenty of good candidates for any job who will take the pains to clean up their resumes beyond reproach.

and that’s probably enough of a rant from *me* . . .

spelling is probably a bigger deal in things like queries. b/c they’re short documents that you’re using to make yourself look good. so if you’ve got any kind of glaring error in one of those, it might count against you. but in the actual manuscript itself, it seems like a few mistakes here and there shouldn’t make a difference. everyone makes those mistakes, like the they’re/their/there thing, even if they know better.
sometimes people’s computers have sticky keys, too. *grumble*

chances are, when you’re writing the story, you’ll be paying more attention to the story, not to the spelling or the grammar.

However, I do think that if a beginning writer sends out a MS. that’s full of obvious spelling errors, it won’t help matters. If you misspell “bouillabaisse” or something in a MS., nobody’s going to care too much, but if there are frequent misspellings of common words, it’s going to count against you. And it should: spell checkers can handle a lot of this stuff.

I know perfectly well when to use “their,” “they’re,” and “there,” but when I’m writing something quickly, I might make a slip of the pen and misuse one of them. But I would catch it when I read it over later.

The situation changes when you are a published writer. Once you have a contract, you can be confident that even if you turn in a somewhat sloppy MS., people like me will fix it up. We won’t name any names, but many well-known writers turn in final drafts that…need work. I’m fine with that–it’s what I make a living from. And I’ve seen enough to be pretty forgiving. The act of creating text necessitates a certain state of mind that is, I believe, somewhat at odds with the prescriptive part of the brain that tells one whether something is grammatically and orthographically correct.

my favourite thing though is when people misuse quotation marks.

Like: “sorry!” no eftpos.

we’ll “fix” your telephone!

please make yourself “comfortable”

(Is it sad that I just gave my comment a quick scan to make sure I didn’t just make myself look like an idiot? )

I’m also in love with dictionary.com. It is a a lifesaver sometimes.

It’s weird that commas and periods should exert so much influence, but when you have to keep pausing and backtracking to find out where one thought ends and the next begins, you really do lose the thread of a story.

(Not that that would necessarily stop an editor, in the end. But I can’t imagine it helps you get out of a slush pile.)

Thanks muchly.

wow. those people really don’t know what they’re talking about.

Why is there so much bad information out there for would-be writers?