14 | The Writer • May 2020
The guy answering her wondered
why this was necessary. “If my idea is
good enough,” he demanded, “why do
I need to worry about grammar? That’s
your job.”
As a longtime copy editor, I felt per-
sonally affronted by the tweeter. Not
“worry” about grammar? The nerve.
Clearly this dude was just lazy, I
thought. I began dashing off a snide
response but then remembered my
impending deadline. I switched from
social media combatant to editor mode
and resolved to forget about the
tweet...only I couldn’t.
I slowly realized Lazy Dude might
have been sincere. Editors issue a lot of
commands, and writers get, under-
standably, sick of being told to do
things when they aren’t offered the
“why” behind it.
Let’s all get on the same page.
Grammar is not meant to be oppres-
sive. It provides guidelines to reduce
confusion that would otherwise arise
in our writing. Here are three reasons
using proper grammar in a query or
completed manuscript is vital:- Correct grammar makes your
pitch easier to understand. Reading
messy grammar is difficult. Editors
receive lots of mail. If your misplaced
apostrophes and overzealous comma-
ing obscure your point, the editor will
move on to the next pitch in their
overflowing inbox. - Bad grammar distracts from
your ideas. When an editor wastes
minutes trying to decode your unique
system of capitalization, they’re not
digesting your insights. A brilliant
pitch littered with typos has less
chance of earning the green light than
a neatly presented yet mediocre idea. - Clean copy shows attention to
detail. It’s hard to trust someone who
cannot take 45 seconds to run spell-
check. Knowing an assigned piece will
be submitted with proper grammar
gives an editor confidence in your
A WORD ON GRAMMAR
CHECKERSSome copy editors regard
grammar checkers the way
humans view robots in the
Terminator movies: with
deep suspicion. I like these
tools, as long as you don’t
develop a dependency on
them and you don’t take
everything they take as gos-
pel. Recognize that apps lack
contextual cognizance, and
they sometimes make weird
suggestions. (A grammar
checker once urged me to
replace “breakfast” with
“lunch” or “dinner” to avoid
repetition of the word
“breakfast” twice on one
page. Um, no.)
Yet grammar programs
catch small typos effectively,
such as repeated words or
errant letters. Saving face on
a few minor errors is worth
the minor hassle of ignoring
25 other supposed “errors.”
Scrutinize each recommenda-
tion carefully and institute
the changes you agree with.I
was scrolling Twitter recently, as one
too often does when facing a tight edit-
ing deadline, when I spied a tweet more
offensive to me than anything I’ve ever
read on the site, and that’s saying
something. The tweet in question was a
response to one of my favorite editors, who
had advised writers to use spellcheck and
proofread for grammar before submitting an
essay for publication.