DOES PERFECT GRAMMAR RUIN VOICE? by Hilda Eunice Burgos

During the revision process for my upcoming book, my editor pointed out some places where the eleven-year-old first person narrator didn’t sound natural.  I reread those passages and found that I agreed with her.  The problem was that the narrator’s sentences were grammatically correct, and most kids wouldn’t speak that way (e.g., saying “I felt badly” instead of “I felt bad”).  This created a dilemma for me.  While I didn’t want to sacrifice voice for grammar, I also didn’t want to sacrifice grammar for voice.  So I asked myself: are grammar and voice mutually exclusive?  Or can they happily co-exist?

I think the answer is (mostly) the latter, although I have to admit that I have read many excellent books that toss the rules of grammar aside.  I always feel torn when I read those books.  On the one hand, the grammatically incorrect voice is often a major contributor to the book’s excellence.  On the other hand, I think about how I learned English through school and books because my family spoke only Spanish at home.  If grammar had not been taught at my schools, how would I have learned it?  And if all the books I read had been full of — albeit intentional — grammatical errors, wouldn’t I have been thoroughly confused?  Many middle and high school English classes no longer include rigorous grammar instruction.  Does this mean that books have to fill that void?  If they don’t, will children from non-English-speaking households be at a disadvantage?

I’m not certain about the answers to these questions.  What do other writers think?  I’m going to keep thinking about this.  In the meantime, I don’t want to misinform kids — especially bilingual kids like me — about the proper rules of English grammar.  So I’ll do my best to seamlessly join grammar and voice in my books.  Hopefully my readers will be entertained by the characters and stories while also learning a thing or two about conjugating verbs and using objective pronouns.

I SENT WHAT?! by Hilary Wagner

We've all done it. I don't care how well published you are or how new to the industry you are, but we've all sent something out with a big fat humbling and in most cases highly visible typo--and many times more than one. It's unavoidable. No matter how many times you read through a manuscript, you are bound to miss things. It's simply part of being human and how the brain works.

Now then, If you've recently sent a manuscript out to an agent or editor and realized you've left in some conspicuous typos, don't freak out. Take a step back and know that it happens to everyone. Besides, if someone was going to bounce you out of consideration for a typo or two (or even a couple more) in your 250 page manuscript, possibly it's someone you wouldn't want to work with anyhow. Clearly, there are flagrant typos, wherein the reader is tripping over typos in every paragraph, that's not going to fly, but everyone, from writers, to agents, to editors, miss things now and again. After all, we are only human and if humans were perfect, there would never be typos in published books--bestselling books--books that have been combed through by the author, the editor, readers, and copy editors, BEFORE they hit the shelves. In other words, it happens. It does. Period.

Tips for catching typos:

Print it out: Print out the full manuscript. Somehow a lot more typos slip by the naked eye staring at a monitor than when you hold the physical manuscript, knocking out typos like Mike Tyson with your almighty red pen.

Read your work out loud: This requires you to read every word from start to finish. Time consuming and dry throat inducing? Yes, but a lot more effective than skimming through it silently.

Let your work sit a while: This is a hard one for me, as I'm about as patient as a starving bear, but do it. Even if it's just for a few days, let your work sit. This will cause you to read your words more thoroughly and thoughtfully, rather than flying through something you were just working on.

A second set of eyes: When time permits, I always have my husband read through my work before I send it off. Since he's reading it for the first time, it's far easier for him to catch "to" versus "too" than it would be for my eyes, which at this point in the process, have gone blind to the little things.

Okay, truth time. In my first manuscript I had typos. After I caught them (which was after I hit "send") I sat at my laptop and cringed, wondering how on earth I could have missed something so glaringly obvious. I probably read through the manuscript at least 50 times, but there they were in all their glory, "shutters" instead of "shudders", "there" instead of "their". You get the picture. I wondered if I'd be automatically rejected based on this, but I learned editors get it. They understand how things get missed. It's about your impelling story not your misspelling of "accommodate".

In the end, I got published! Luckily, the typos did not. ;)

Long story short, there will generally be normal inconsequential typos somewhere in something you send out. Don't sweat it. It doesn't change your story or your hard work. It only makes you human.

PS: If there are typos in this post, please blame someone else. :)

Hilary

Spellcheck: the ultimate frenemy

This is a real screenshot of my current work-in-progress (tentatively titled Faking the Aurora Borealis) being highlighted by Word’s built-in spelling and grammar proofing.

People of all ages are warned not to rely on spellcheck to proof their documents. As we’re all aware of, spellcheck doesn’t always distinguish correctly between heard or herd, or they’re and their, and sometimes it even incorrectly suggests changing it’s to its. We get it: spellcheck doesn’t always work.

But let’s not forget the other side of spellcheck—the grammar. (Is there such thing as grammarcheck? …Oh, probably not. My word processor just underlined the word. Think I should “add to dictionary”?)

Grammar proofing will pick things up like:

Fragments. These babies are vital in dialogue and interior monologue—in fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you have no fragments at all, you’re doing something wrong.

Order of words. Seventh graders won’t always speak in noun-verb-noun sentences, now, do they?

Improper grammar. Same as above. As well, when saying something like “I paused, then took a step back”, Word will insist on placing an “and” in front of the “then”. This has always bamboozled me. Anyone have an explanation?

Tense shifts. When your protagonist is thinking something, the tense is present. However, you may be writing in past. When the two tenses are cobbled together in one sentence, spellcheck throws a fit, as you can see from the image above.

Other languages. Word’s “detect language automatically” is a failure. My protagonist has a French background, and therefore French words are dropped here and there. And yet, simple things like oui (“yes”), non (“no”) and d’accord (“okay” or “I agree”) don’t get picked up. So either I live with the underlining, or manually highlight each word and change the designated language to French.

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Now, to deal with these, you’ve got a few options.

Turn off grammar proofing. If you have Microsoft 2007 or later, you can go to File > Options > Proofing and deselect “Mark grammar errors as you type” and “Check grammar with spelling”. This will turn off any kind of grammar check.

If you don’t want to turn it off completely, choose Ignore rule. When mousing over a green-underlined word or phrase, right-click, choose “Grammar…” from the drop-down menu and click “Ignore rule”. This is especially handy for fragments.

Finally, you can Hide grammar errors in this document only. Again, under File > Options > Proofing, at the very bottom you’ll find this option, along with a choice to hide spelling errors.

The bottom line here is: sometimes grammar/spellcheck has no idea what it’s doing. It’s all about context, and only you can judge if that “improper grammar” sentence really is improper grammar—or if it’s just the way an eleven-year-old speaks.

You tell me: how much do you rely on spelling and grammar proofing?

—Yahong