Blogger: Mary Keeley
Writers have so much craft or technique to master. If you are a novelist, you’re consumed with things such as adding more tension or deepening the character development. If you write nonfiction, you’re concerned with organizing your supporting arguments for a convincing conclusion. Along the way it’s easy to miss smaller mistakes. Editors will overlook an occasional mistake, but more than several detract from your manuscript and may earn a rejection. Today I’ll give you 10 tips for a clean manuscript that address the most frequent mistakes I see.
Authors who have been published for years fall into some of these errors too, but back when they got their first contract, the market wasn’t as tight. 
Publishers had a larger editorial staff that was able to work with manuscripts in greater depth. However, in today’s publishing economy, overloaded editors often reject proposals based on these same errors, concluding the writer isn’t ready for publication. You can reduce the chance of this happening by correcting these common word usage and sentence structure problems.
Common errors in word usage:
- Fewer vs. less. Fewer refers to number; less refers to amount or degree. Examples: That jar contains fewer jellybeans. That jar is less full.
- Who vs. whom. Who is the nominative form; whom is the predicate form. Example #1: Who wrote this piece? This piece was written by whom?
- That vs. who/whom. Use that in reference to an object. Use who/whom when referring to a person. Example: John found the book that was in the library. John found his friend, who was in the library. John returned the book to whom it belonged.
- That vs. which. A restrictive clause calls for that. Which is used in nonrestrictive clauses and requires a comma in front of it because it is additional information that doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence. Examples: Sue bought the dress that fit her best. Sue bought the dress that fit her best, which happened to be on sale.
- Anxious or eager. The word anxious is a form of the word anxiety and should be used only in that context. Example: I am anxious about the appointment with my doctor. I am eager to go to the concert.
Sentence structure issues:
- Wrong order of thoughts results in a sentence that’s cumbersome to read and hard to understand the main thought.
- Using the wrong word or phrase stops short of nailing the intended point.
- Packing too much into one sentence becomes a chore for readers when they have to re-read it in order to grasp everything being said.
- Repetition of a word or phrase makes readers bored. It’s best to not repeat a descriptive word within several paragraphs.
- Lack of variation in the length of sentences is okay if you want to put readers to sleep; it’s monotonous. A string of short sentences or incomplete sentences is choppy as well. You’ll lose readers’ attention when you have a string of long sentences.
These tips may appear to point to minor things compared to character motivation and plot issues, but it pays to watchful for them. The reason is that relaxed email and blogging style and texting jargon can lead to bad habits in professional writing. In creative writing for publication, these 10 tips for a clean manuscript could make all the difference in impressing an editor with your professionalism. When in doubt, turn to the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.
This list isn’t exhaustive. What additional word usage errors do you see frequently? Which mistakes are you prone to make? Which ones have been unclear to you until now?
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Its good that you posted you’re thoughts.
Yes. I almost make those mistakes all the time. Probably do, I just don’t always catch them. Especially the “its” versus “it’s” … yes.
The bizarre thing is that Word spell checker will suggest considering the alternative even when the correct form is being used. It seems to have trouble deciding whether the possessive “its” or the contracted “it’s” is correct.
Funny, Shirlee. And you came up with that in the wee, bleary-eyed hours of the morning. I’m impressed.
Who/whom is hard for me in some instances. “She is the one whom/who I wanted to see.” I think “who” would be correct here, but there are a few cases I’m just never clear on. I try to plug in left out prepositions like “for, to, by, from” … and if I can plug them in and make sense, I might should use “whom.” I need to research that/which … I’ve not given much attention to those, so I hope I’ve been using those correctly. I see “y’all” spelled “ya’ll” quite often. But honestly, when I see a few mistakes in an admired author’s works, it gives me a little hope that I’m not the only one who struggles. What bothers me more than misspellings is someone who continually points out others misspellings or mis-sayings, as though they get it correct all the time. I have a few family members like that. When they discover you like to write, they become professionals and feel a responsibility to correct you continually. Yes. Ugh. I appreciate help … but correcting my speech gets on my nerves a bit. I know the right thing, it just doesn’t always come out right. 🙂
Shelli, you aren’t alone. The who/whom choice is a common mistake. In your example whom actually correct because it is the object (objective case) of the verb (wanted to see whom). However, that sounds formal in today’s casual conversation. Writers can avoid the issue often by rewording the sentence, “She is the one I wanted to see.”
Yes … that’s usually what I do … anything to avoid using whom. I’d rather avoid it than make a mistake with it … since I can’t seem to figure it out. 🙂
Umm, #8 is about math.
Just sayin’.
Don’t be hatin’ on the math. Numbers are your friends 🙂
Not ‘hating’…more like HIDING.
Yes, I know they’re our friends. But so are Hershey kisses.
😉
Great advice! I plan on printing this blog out so I can use it every time I edit my work. What I’d love to learn more about is comma placement. It seems like just when I think I’ve figured out when to use a comma or not I get confused again.
Yes, Megan, comma usage has become a conundrum. Recently, the rule of thumb is to insert them for the greatest readability, but there are certain rules that still should be followed. Follow the guidelines in the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and you won’t go wrong.
Mary, I struggle with having to make myself deliberately use incorrect grammatical forms to avoid sounding too formal. Proper use of nominative and accusative cases is so natural from all my formal writing that I’ve had to force myself into misuse for a more colloquial flavor. I want to use the correct form of who/whom, I/me, and we/us, but doesn’t that risk making the sentences seem stilted? I’ve dumbed down my manuscripts in the rewrites, but should I have? What are the guidelines for choosing between correct and “natural sounding?”
I’ve also had to retrain myself to omit the implied “that” when formal writing would include the word. Ending with a preposition and splitting infinitives – definite no-no’s in my former style. In my formal writing, a preposition at the end of a sentence was something for which I would not stand.
What truly bothers me is the encouragement to only use simple past (ran) when past progressive (was running) or past perfect (had run) more accurately expresses the time-dependent nature of the action. I’ve been told editors don’t like authors to use the more accurate verb tenses because it slows down the pace. Is that true?
Carol, I know what you mean about the struggle between proper and more casual tone. Publishers understand this too. Balance between the two is probably the best way to go, partly so that we don’t lose the sense of professionalism, as well as a quiet reinforcing tone of authority in nonfiction writing. When books are contracted, the editor in the publishing house will edit these things according to the publishing house’s style, without tampering with the author’s voice.
My question is directed at fiction, which is what I am writing. I should have mentioned that. Changing the tense is messing with the author’s voice while also confusing the time relationships of the action. Do publishers actually push using simple past only? Does it make a difference if a person is writing YA or adult fiction?
Another formal writing requirement is the almost total avoidance of contractions. That is a habit that is hard to break. I do a fair amount of rewriting to change to contractions for a more casual tone and to slip in past perfect less conspicuously with an ‘d.
-Commas vs a new sentence.
-Hearing Canadian English in my head and having to figure out the American equivalent.
-“I kid you not.” Or? “I’m not kidding.”
And NO, I do not use “eh” in my work.
You’ll hear “I kid you not” in Idaho and Minnesota. You can always fall back on “ain’t joshing ya.”
English is a living language and we can talk – or chat online – without following traditional rules. And spellcheck, (which tried to change “or chat” to orchid in the previous sentence) can drive us crazy. But anything in print will last for a long time, so it’s important to follow those rules. Thanks for reminding us about them.
I like talking orchids… Some of the best humor I see each day comes from what the iPhone does to correct my texts.
I’ve heard that too many ellipses can look…well…not very…good…
Some people learn this the hard way.
Thank you, Mary. I enjoyed your post.
I struggle with “that” versus “which.” Also, in my fiction writing, I have to use the “search and find” feature to help me and eliminate many thats in order to make the narrative voice sound less formal.
There are two common grammatical errors that make me crazy. The top one is when a speaker or writer uses “their” as a pronoun to refer back to a singular noun: An employee should never be late for their shift. My other pet peeve is the use of “I” as an objective pronoun: The man gave the tickets to Danny and I. You listed my third bugaboo, which is the difference between “fewer” and “less.” I find myself talking back to television commercials when I hear such and such a product has “less” calories than that one. Invariably, I’ll grumble, “Fewer.” Of course, I need to stop that. In life, there are bigger things to spend energy on but, as your post reminds us, grammar and mechanics are not little things in a manuscript.
All right. Now I’m clicking the “submit” button with a fervent hope that my post doesn’t have any proofreading errors. 😉
One of my editors/beta readers is helping me to improve my sentence fluency and I’m even enjoying my writing more! It’s amazing how lyrical non-fiction can sound when sentence lengths are varied.
So it’s good if your manuscript has fewer less-obvious errors? It’s its absence of errors we should strive for—or rather, for which we should strive. That which gives us trouble in the grammar department is what we should work on, which that may turn out to be good for our publication chances.
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When considering imperative vs. indicative, we shall use will, or perhaps we will use shall.
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To comfort an upset grammarian, pat them on the back and say, “There, their, they’re.”
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And, of course, may our manuscripts have more better-constructed sentences.
In grade school in the ‘60s in Idaho, we were drilled on the proper selection of “will” versus “shall” as a function of whether it was first, second, or third person. I’d be willing to bet most today don’t even know there was a different level of forcefulness depending on the selection and that it shifted depending on whether it was 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.
*Of course in ES&H parlance, “should” means you ought to and “shall” means you have to or else. There’s no free will involved when it’s a “shall.”
LBJ’s presidential announcement was our reference for the correct use of will/shall:
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” I guess that dates us, Carol.
There are fewer and fewer who know those distinctions. Or should that be less and less?