by April L’Orange, cross-posted at The Editor’s Pen
I’m not going to talk about punctuation today. S.L. Armstrong did an excellent post on punctuation and grammar just a few weeks ago. Instead, I want to tell you why you should care.
Most of us learned punctuation and grammar in elementary school and haven’t thought about them much since. When I hear from a writer about punctuation at all, it’s usually because she’s just washed her hands of it. Whatever the complaint—and there are definitely some valid complaints—the end result is the same:
It doesn’t matter if my spelling and grammar aren’t perfect. My editor will fix that before the book goes to press.
From an economic standpoint, this makes a superficial sort of sense. After all, if you’re trying to crank out three or four books a year, looking up grammar and punctuation rules may seem like time that could be better spent writing. It’s certainly tempting to assume that Somebody Else is getting paid to do grammar and punctuation.
For better or for worse, it’s not that simple.
Most writers have had a manuscript come back to them with so many corrections in the text that they aren’t sure they can find their original words. On a good day, it’s disheartening, and on a bad day, it’s terrifying. The piece of the writer doesn’t see is that it’s also limiting. If your editor is putting that much time into mechanics, her developmental editing almost certainly suffers.
Developmental editing is that thing that can help your book go from “okay” to “wow!” Developmental editing helps sell books. You want your editor to be able to do that piece of her job as well as possible, and it becomes hard for her to keep track of story elements and flow when sometimes she has to read a sentence three or four times just to figure out what you were trying to say.
Additionally, not all editors are created equal. If you’re working with Storm Moon Press, you’re lucky to have a publishing house that cares a lot about the details. As an editor, I’ve had to quietly refuse to review books written by acquaintances because the copyediting was so bad I’d never be able to give it more than three stars, no matter how good the story was. You can’t always trust that your copy editor or proofreader knew her stuff. You need to be able to do a reality check.
So while no editor expects a manuscript come into her hands mechanically perfect, do your homework as much as possible. Look up grammar rules—there are some great resources online. Ask your editor punctuation questions when she’s changed something in your manuscript and you don’t understand the underlying rule. Do everything you can to improve the mechanics in your writing, so that your editor can focus on her job, so that you’ll know if your editor isn’t doing her job, and so your publication dates are less likely to be pushed out because your manuscript was more work than anyone expected.
In the end, you’ll be happier if you do.
