For some writers, grammar comes naturally.
For the rest of us, there’s Grammar Girl.
One of the advantages of copy-editing your own work, even if it’s preliminary to a professional copy editor, is that once you learn the rules behind your errors, you are less likely to repeat them in the future. Have a resource at hand that explains the rules is essential to this process. Back in the day, this was a style guide, usually spiral-bound and a little intimidating. Today, it’s a browser bookmark to Grammarist, or a Grammarly extension on your browser, or [insert your favorite grammar advice site here].
There are three distinct things you’ll be looking for in a correctness copy edit:
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Grammar: Are you breaking the rules of grammar anywhere? Do your subjects agree with your verbs? Are your tenses correct? Are you using the wrong form of weird irregular verbs? Any dangling modifiers or unnecessary fragments? Are you using your prepositions and conjunctions correctly?
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Spelling: Is every word spelled correctly, including those you have made up? With spellcheck, there’s really no excuse for any misspellings in your published work. But there are several things spellcheck won’t catch: Are you using capitalization correctly? Are you using words that have two meanings correctly? Are you confusing any similar words, such as peruse/pursue, intention/intension, affect/effect?
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Punctuation: While punctuation generally falls under grammar, many of the most common errors occur here, so I think it deserves its own category. Are you using commas correctly? This is the biggest thing people tend to have problems with, and it’s a serious matter because it affects the flow of the work. How about quotes? Hyphenation? Apostrophes? Colons and semicolons (or as we now know them, smiley or winkey)?
You probably already know how to spot many of these errors in your own work. Here are the tricks I use to look for them in mine:
Reading the text aloud always helps; when you hear the break the errors make in the natural rhythm of the text, you know there’s something there that needs fixing.
Trusting your instincts–if it sounds wrong and looks wrong, it probably is wrong. Or at least worth looking into. When in doubt, look up the rule on your grammar source. As a last resort, randomly type words that might be related to your issue into Google. Chances are, someone had the same question you did, and randomly typed the same frantic words onto some site like yahoo answers. From there, you might not get a credible answer, but you might at least get a name for your problem, with which you can then return to your grammar source.
Reach out to your writing community. Maybe you’re a comma expert, but weak in verb tenses. But you know another writer who always asks you about comma rules, but never has any issues with tense. Problem, solved. Trade edits, or trade mini-lessons on these rules.
Along those same lines, reading and critiquing other writers’ work can be a valuable source of grammatical knowledge. Sometimes we can’t see the errors in our own work, but they stand out in the writing of others. Taking the time to learn the mistakes others are making and the rules behind those mistakes will inevitably improve your own grammar.
When all else fails, there is MS Word’s spelling and grammar check. For years, I was annoyed to no end by those squiggly green lines. But I’ve come to find that the grammar check is really useful. Especially in areas where your understanding of grammar is weak, because it actually tells you what rule you are breaking! I’ve found a lot of valid errors that would have looked terrible upon publication by running a grammar check on my manuscript. BUT a word of caution: You have to use the grammar check smartly and proactively. You can’t just click accept to each and every change. It will find issue with some sentences that are clearly fine, and it will offer suggestions that make the sentence sound terrible, when you as a writer can come up with a way to fix the error AND make the sentence sound better. So, have that grammar resource open and make sure you know why MS Word is telling you there’s an error.
Finally, you won’t necessarily find and fix every single error. But one thing you can do is find patterns of errors, learn the rules behind those patterns, and stop making them in subsequent projects. For example, I have an issue with confusing the conjugations of the words “Lay” and “Lie.” One means “I lie down,” the other means “I lay the pillow down.” In the manuscript for my last book, I’m pretty sure my developmental editor circled every single instance of lie, lay, laid, and lain because it was used incorrectly. But, now that I know I have that issue, I know to pay special attention to it when I line edit. I looked up the rule on grammar girl, and I know what the correct usage is, and now I check every instance of these words before I publish.
So, either by reading out-loud, reading peer’s work, asking your peers, or using MS Word’s grammar check, identify the patterns of weakness in your grammar, spelling and punctuation, and correct them by enhancing your understanding of the applicable rules. Learn why the rules exist. Knowing the logic behind them can help you be a better writer AND a better copy editor.
A note on breaking the rules:
There will come times when you need to break the rules of the English language. Never do so without a purpose, and always make certain your reasoning is sound. Know the rule before you break it, and know that even if it makes sense to you, you will probably have readers who are unhappy with it.
When might you want to break the rules?
For emphasis: Sometimes breaking the rules can draw attention to things in the writing that you want to emphasize. For example, it’s illegal to start a sentence with a conjunction. But I really want to, gosh darn it! Without that break for emphasis, the sentence is weakened: “It’s illegal to start a sentence with a conjunction, but I really want to, gosh darn it!”
If a character speaks with an accent or dialect: You want to be careful with this one, because it can easily be done very badly, usually by overdoing it, or being inconsistent. All advice I’ve heard on dialect points to choosing one specific grammar/syntax rule, breaking it, and staying utterly consistent with it. For example, Yoda’s dialog does just this, flipping his sentence construction from “subject-verb-object” to “object-subject-verb.” Works very well, it does. When I created the dialect for the Semija in Dreams of QaiMaj, I simply removed articles from their speech patterns. It gave sort of short, clipped sound to their speech. It implied perhaps different or under-educated social class, but didn’t make them sound unintelligent.
It just sounds better: Sometimes even if a rule tells you to do things one way, it really sounds better a different way. Consider the rule of never putting a preposition at the end of a sentence. Would you ever say, “On which table did you place the letter?” NO. You would say, “Which table did you place the letter on?” If breaking a rule makes your sentences sound more like how people speak, do it. This is fiction writing, not academia.
Everybody’s doing it: Likewise, some rules of grammar hardly even count as rules anymore because the general thrust of the language is toward breaking them. The English Language us constantly evolving. The point of grammatical correctness, especially for a fiction writer, is clarity of communication, not scoring points for being correct. A good example of this is adjectifying verbs and nouns, and nounifying adjectives. See what I did there? Technically, the word adjectifying is incorrect, but you probably understood what I meant. In case you didn’t–I meant using a word that is typically one part of speech as a different part of speech.
Did you find the errors in yesterday’s post? If not go back and have a look before scrolling down for the answers!
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In the sentence reading “You may be asking, Can I hit publish,” either Can should be lower case, or the dialog should be in quotes.
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In the paragraph about consistency, the word consistency is capitalized in one place, and not capitalized in others.
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In the paragraph about hiring a copy editor, the word excerpt is misspelled in one place, as exerpt.
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In the first heading about copy editing, “copy editor” is capitalized; in the second heading, it is uncapitalized.
