Yore Spell-Checker Stinks:
Five Reasons to Proofread Your Manuscript
by Linda M Au

You've written it. You've rewritten it. You've printed it out and scribbled all over it. You've got it just where you want it. Now it's time to send it out to agents and publishers, right?

Not so fast. Has someone else read over it for mistakes? Someone who knows the difference between an apostrophe and an appositive?

In my eighteen years as a proofreader and typesetter, I've corrected every grammatical mistake and formatting error imaginable—twice. Here are five reasons you need to master proofreading before sending manuscripts out into the big wide world. Who knows? If you get good enough at spotting—and correcting—these common errors, you might put me out of business.

1. Yore Spell-Checker Stinks. Your brain plus a good dictionary is better than software that can't distinguish between "its" and "it's" or "they're," "there," and "their." You should never mindlessly run the spell-checker and think your work is done. There are several good online dictionaries, and even an old print dictionary is good enough to check most spelling. (Not all spelling, though: For example, "anymore" has gone from two words to one.) Think about definitions and context when reading. Remember that "it’s" is always a contraction of "it is," "they’re" is a contraction of "they are," and "their" is always possessive. Pick up a grammar textbook at a used bookstore or online. Oddly, despite an overdependence on the spell-checker, two words I often see written incorrectly are "misspell" and "grammar." Even a bad spell-checker would have caught those. Run it once, then switch on your brain.

2. Verbs and Punctuation Matter. I'm not your sixth grade grammar teacher with funny glasses and orthopedic shoes, but I know a thing or two about what parts of speech go where, and which ones don't fit even with a shoehorn. A few common grammatical mistakes writers make are:

• Too many commas. Separating independent clauses and adjectives in succession is fine, but don't make the reader pause every four words, okay?
   
• Too few commas. The trend may be toward less punctuation, but it's still there for a reason. Let commas keep your ideas and word-pictures clear to your reader.
   
• Overuse of the semicolon, especially in fiction or dialogue. People don't usually speak in lengthy, convoluted sentences (except those who say "and" a lot). People usually speak in shorter sentences. Don't be afraid to use a period instead of the more pretentious semicolon.
   
• Incorrect paragraphing in dialogue. As a rule, start a new paragraph any time dialogue changes to a different person. When putting a narrative sentence in between two lines of dialogue, be sure to keep it with the speaker that makes the most sense.

3. Facts Overrule Instincts. I once proofread a book going to print in which the copy editor had changed the proper spelling of "Jon Voight" to the incorrect "Jon Voigt," probably because the spell-checker thought it was misspelled. Her instincts were good, but her fact-checking was bad. Writers (and copy editors) might fail to use tools properly, resulting in sloppy writing. The Internet is a great tool for fact-checking, but use it as a skeptic. In this example, don't trust a fan site for good spelling, but do trust an official actor's site or a professional movie site such as IMDb.com. Quadruple-check everything. It takes more time, but it's still faster than the old days of heading off to the library to do research. And never, ever trust popular user-editable "encyclopedia" sites. Someone I know once edited an entry in one of these to include herself in a list of "gangsta rappers" as a joke, and it stayed that way for weeks before another user changed it.

4. Change is Inevitable. Fiction writers have a habit of revising their work ad nauseam; the longer the piece, the more it gets revised. This is a good thing. Editors like this. But, somewhere along the way, Inspector Smith gets changed to Inspector Jones, and the writer forgets to change all instances of the wrong name. This happens with names, physical characteristics, places, and in some cases, even the title of the book itself! Keep a good chart of everything from names to ages, dates, eye color, and any other easily forgotten information. Go through your manuscript meticulously, using (but not relying on) a global "find/replace" to change names. And don't forget to make any changes in the headers or footers. Also, if you've changed the title since formulating your first query letter, update the letter as well.

5. Style Changes. Few writers own the Chicago Manual of Style, and yet editors expect them to know all the rules. Even if you're one of the blessed few to possess your own copy, have you ever tried to find something in it? With the publication of a new edition of CMOS for the first time in a decade, the style conventions are subtly shifting, and the publishing world is scrambling to keep up. A few notable shifts from the 14th edition of CMOS to the new 15th edition include:

• The serial comma is out. In a series of items, the rule used to be to separate the ongoing list with commas throughout. Now, that final comma is left out, unless taking it out confuses the reader.
   
• The comma around an appositive is mostly out. You were taught that leaving the comma out of "Joe's wife Jane went to the store" meant Joe had more than one wife. It no longer necessarily implies that. The default is that your character has only one spouse. Leave out commas around "Jr." and "Sr." too. Use commas around appositives only where they make your writing clearer to your reader.

According to CMOS, a general rule with punctuation is: Less is more.

They say you don't get a second chance to make a good first impression, and nowhere is that truer than in the publishing world. It's getting tougher to get past the glut of queries and manuscripts cluttering an agent or editor's desk. Set yourself apart from the rest. Be the professional you are. Proofread your manuscript, making edits necessary to ensure it's as close to perfect as possible.