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Getting Your Manuscript Ready - Part Two

© Janet Kay Blaylock

In Part One, you learned about formatting and how it is important to present your manuscript with a professional look. Another important aspect in editing your work is checking for English Grammar errors. First, we'll look at a couple of common punctuation errors.

Grammar Errors

After you have finished your final draft, then you need to check for grammatical errors. It is important to submit a manuscript that looks professional. Publishers don't want to read a manuscript that is full of grammatical errors.

(1) Punctuation

Have you checked your punctuation marks? Do you have comma errors? Are you sure of your punctuation rules? If you have questions about punctuation, then it is important that you purchase an English Grammar book that will help you.

Some of the most common errors in punctuation that I have seen are with commas. Here are a couple of examples:

Independent Clauses - When you have two independent clauses that are separated by a coordinate conjunction such as: and, or, but, then you need to place a comma before the word. In the following sentence, you have two independent clauses. They are joined by the word and. A comma needs to be placed before the word and.

Tom likes to play basketball, and Mary likes to watch basketball games.

If there aren't two independent clauses, then you don't place a comma before the word.

Tom likes to play basketball and likes to read.

Subordinate Conjunctions - If you have two independent clauses that are separated by the word "because," then you do not use a comma.

Tom likes to play basketball because he enjoys watching games on television.

There are no commas before the word because. If it was a coordinating conjunction like in the sentence above, then you would place a comma before it.

Besides these two areas, you need to make sure that all of your punctuation marks are used correctly. For example, you need to make sure that you use a period at the end of a sentence and a question mark at the end of a question. These are just two examples of how to use punctuation marks.

Now let's look at capitalization errors.

Capitalization

Have you checked your manuscript over for capitalization errors? It is important to make sure you are capitalizing the correct words or not capitalizing words that shouldn't be.

Here is an example of what I have found in manuscripts.

When you use the words my, his, her, etc. in front of nouns, you do not capitalize the noun. For example, I have seen writers use this phrase: "my Father." This is incorrect. If you substitute a proper noun in place of the common noun, it wouldn't sound right. Let's look at this example: "my Mary." The word "my" is a possessive pronoun. The phrase should be "my father."

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