033: The Top 3 Grammar Mistakes I See When Copyediting
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The Top 3 Grammar Mistakes I See When Copyediting
Welcome to what I think is the first ever purely grammatical episode of the blank page to book podcast. I don't think I've done a deep dive into grammar, partly because it's hard to talk about grammatical stuff. And give examples when I'm just saying them. Please go check out my Instagram on the day that this podcast comes out. I will give, the examples that I've given this podcast episode of grammar mistakes and what to do instead, I'll make a carousel post on Instagram so that you can see the examples and see what I'm talking about. In case that's a little bit easier for you to kind of digest and look at visually. So just bear with me, I think that's probably why I haven't done a great grammatical episode. But the things that I'm talking about in this episode come from things that I've noticed in client manuscripts. One of the services, the editing services, at least that I offers is manuscript evaluation. And in that I'm not focused on grammar, I'm not editing anything. I'm purely giving feedback on the story, the characters, plot inconsistencies, Setting, Dialogue, that kind of stuff. So with copy editing, in that service, that's where I clean up, I go through your entire manuscript and I clean up grammar, grammar, punctuation, spelling, verb, tense, subject, verb agreement, that kind of stuff. So that's where these these things are coming from.
Okay, let me pull up my notes, because I did have to think about the three examples I wanted to give. And of course, it's three, I always like doing three things, three tips of this four tips. Well, I guess I've done a few that have four, but most of them have three. Okay, first, first grammatical mistake that I see errors with dialogue tags. Now, before I tell you, give you more information about what the mistake is, and all of that, I just want to say I want to include a disclaimer that there is a difference in how dialogue is punctuated between British English and American English. I'm American, a lot of my clients are American. And a lot of my clients outside the US want to use American English. So they follow that formatting 95% of the time, when I'm copy editing, that's what I'm doing. But just know, if you're British, or you're reading, reading something written by a British author, there might be differences in how they structure their dialogue. So just keep that in mind. So the mistake that I see isn't necessarily the single quotation mark versus the double quotation mark, I think a lot of people have that down. The error that I see is more the punctuation mark that comes at the end of the piece of dialogue. So before the closing quotation mark, including a, or putting down a comma when it should be a period, or putting a period when it should be a comma. I'm going to give you an example of what I mean. And again, like I mentioned in the beginning, if you want to see this visually, just head over to my Instagram at the Katie Wolf.
So let's say that you have a character named John and John says the sky is blue. Okay, but you include the John said part at the end of it. So quotation mark, the sky is blue, comma, quotation mark said, John, sometimes people will put a period there. The sky is blue period said John, which is not correct. If you have that dialogue tag, and the dialogue tag is just the said John, part of the sentence to let the reader know that it's spoken out loud and to let the reader know who's saying that piece of dialogue. If you have said, You need to have a comma at the end will not need to you could have a question mark or an exclamation point but not a period a period is incorrect. Now, where this can be reversed, is, let's say that you don't have a dialogue tag there. So instead of having said John, John just does some kind of action. And that's the author's way of letting you know who is Speaking. So you might see quotation mark, the sky is blue, period, closing quotation mark. John nodded at Susie, as he spoke. So that's a way of letting us know who's doing the action, and who's who that dialogue can be attributed to. But in that case, because there's no set, John, because there's no dialogue tag, you don't need the comma. In fact, you need a period. So the sky is blue is a complete sentence, it's its own thing. And then you have another sentence that says, John said, or John nodded to Susie, as he spoke.
The second mistake that I see is something called a dangling modifier or a misplaced modifier. There's a few different ways to a few different terms for this. And the easiest way to explain to you what this means is to actually give you an example. So I'm going to do that before we get into it. The example sentence is, while walking outside, the sun's rays were scorching. Okay, maybe not the greatest sentence, but you get the idea. So, while walking outside, comma, the sun's rays were scorching, there are two clauses in that sentence separated by the comma. The first part, while walking outside is meant to convey information about the second part of that sentence. But the problem with this example sentence is that there's no subject that that can modify. The sun is not walking outside. The sun's rays are not walking outside, John is walking outside. So to fix this, so that while walking outside explains more about John, so it modifies John, you would say while walking outside, comma, John, noticed that the sun's rays were scorching. Again, not the most beautiful sentence, but you get the idea. So a lot of times, there's just a mismatch between the first part of the sentence or the modifier that is meant to explain something about the subject in the second part of the sentence. There's a disconnect between that and what it's actually modifying.
A third mistake that I see is using a semicolon when there should be a comma or a comma when there should be a semicolon. When you have two clauses in a sentence, that could be complete sentences on their own. That is, when you use a semicolon, let me give you an example. The sun became too hot, we went back inside the house. Both of those components of that sentence, both of those clauses could stand on their own, you could say the sun became too hot. And that would be a complete sentence, you could say, we went back inside the house, that could be a complete sentence. When you put those two together into the same sentence, you need to have a semicolon instead of a comma, because they can both stand on their own. If you put the sun became too hot comma, we went back inside the house. That's not correct.
Now what you could do if you did want to have a comma, and you didn't want to use a semicolon, you could say, the sun became too hot comma, and we went back inside the house or the sun became too hot comma, so we went back inside the house semicolons sometimes can be a bit of a stylistic preference. Sometimes writers favor semicolons. They like to have them and sometimes writers don't use them at all. So that's something I always keep in mind when I'm copy editing, and they're using a semicolon incorrectly. Or they've spliced it or the or there's something wonky going on with a comma that needs a semicolon, whatever it might be. I've tried to keep that in, in take that into consideration, because sometimes writers just don't use semicolons. So if that's the case, I'm not going to put a semicolon in there. I'm probably going to just put an and so that the the semicolon isn't necessary.
If everything that I said in this episode was over your head, if you are like Katie, I barely even know what a subject of a sentence is like, I don't even know what your modifiers What are you talking about? Please, please don't feel guilty. Don't feel any shame that you don't know what I'm talking about. Grammar is hard, and grammar if you don't use it and don't use these terms regularly. Like of course it's going to disappear from your brain. So go online, there are a ton of resources for grammar you can go to sites like Grammarly even readsy has, which is a blog. Well, it's a way that you can hire editors. But they also have a great blog that has a lot of good writing information, R E, D, S, Y, I think they probably have some blogs or some information about grammar, you can read a book that's up on the basics of grammar, there are a lot of things you can do to brush up on your knowledge of grammar. And you don't have to know everything there is to know you just have to know enough to put the correct punctuation in and make it so it's readable for your reader.
And if you decide to hire an editor, if that's something that you want to do, if if that's something that's in the cards for you financially, the editor will clean up those things. Now, it is still a good idea for you to have a grasp of grammar, for a couple of reasons, it's going to just make your writing better, it's going to make your drafts better if you can at least get the basics down. And it's also probably going to make it cheaper for you- if when you do hire an editor, a lot of editors for copy editing or line editing or proofreading, whatever it is, maybe not proofreading, probably just line and copy editing, they might have a range, I have a range for copy editing, where it depends on how many words the manuscript is, but it also depends on the scope of the project. So if someone has, if I make 10 changes, and I'm copy editing someone's manuscript, it's not going to take me very long to do. So I'm going to charge them less than someone who, you know, I'm making multiple changes in every single sentence of the manuscript. And that's not a bad thing. I'm happy to do that. Don't feel ashamed if that's your your case, like that's what the editor is for. That's my job is to clean up all that stuff. And I'm happy to do it. But it is going to take me longer to do so it's going to be on the higher end of my range, if that's the case. But please don't feel guilt and shame around grammar. And if English isn't your first language, again, like this, this you shouldn't just automatically be expected to know this stuff. There's there are a ton of resources online that can help you to kind of increase your knowledge of the basics of grammar. And the more that you read and start paying attention to how punctuation is put into a book, how dialogue is written, how sentences are constructed, the more that you see examples of it, the easier it's going to be for you to apply that to your own writing.
So that was hard to do. It was hard to do a podcast where I'm just talking about grammar and not show you examples, but I hope that it was still helpful to kind of see these and maybe look at your own writing to see if there's some changes that you can make to make it a little bit more consistent from a grammar perspective. And check out Instagram to to see some examples. Alright, thanks for listening, y'all.