Blogger: Mary Keeley
Several clients are doing final polishing of their books and proposals to get them ready for me to send to editors after the Christmas holidays. Maybe this describes the stage you’re at too. While you’re consumed with fixing craft issues or articulating convincing solutions for your nonfiction topic, don’t overlook the many little errors that detract from your manuscript.
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. But 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 odds of this happening by correcting common sentence structure and word usage problems. The following 10 tips for a clean manuscript address the most frequent mistakes I see.
Popular 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
- 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, who was in the library, found the book.
- That vs. which. A restrictive clause calls for Which is used in nonrestrictive clauses and requires a comma in front of it because it’s 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. 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.
I confess to being guilty of some of these mistakes myself. Most writers are. And relaxed email and blogging style and abbreviated texting jargon dull our alertness to these mistakes. But avoiding these 10 errors in your manuscript and proposal could make all the difference when you need to impress agents and editors with your writing ability.
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?
What’s Your 2017 Focus?
Thank you, Mary, for this helpful (but sometimes painful) list–and for the helpful hints coming our way from Books & Such all year.
*I used to have a sign in my office: “If it can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood.” It was there for me, to remind me to be careful as I typed meeting minutes–after all, we didn’t want to repeat the battles next meeting.
*Some days I want to scream in frustration–that “relaxed” email style still has to make sense! Alas, I overuse the phrase, “please clarify.”
*Let me be clear: to all who write and read here, as we prayerfully evaluate what we accomplished in 2016 and our goals for 2017 — Godspeed, and God bless!
Great list, Mary. Thank you for this.
* In word usage, I’d add ‘whence’ to the list, if anyone still seriously uses it. ‘From whence’ is redundant. It’s just “I lift mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh Thy help…”
* In sentence structure, the overuse of exclamation points is distracting!!!!
* There are a couple of broader structural issues:
– Use of anachronistic language, especially slang and colloquialisms. I’m reading a nonfiction-history now that describes 1943, but often dips into current parlance (both in slang and jargon). It’s jarring.
– Related to this, in writing historical novels many writers fall into stilted narrative language, because examples of formal speech have survived in far larger proportion than has the common language. Lincoln certainly did NOT wander about saying things like, “Fourscore and seven years ago…” in casual conversation. It was a formalization formulated for forcefulness. It’s a lot better to use modern sentence structure and (insofar as possible) period vocabulary, because that’s probably pretty close to how people talked back in the day.
These are great points, Andrew!
Thanks, Jennifer!
I suffer from comma-overuse. I can’t help it – I love the little guys. 🙂 I might also overuse em and en dashes — maybe. 😀
*I see a lot of confusion between it and it’s
*I also see a lot of confusion between the use of between and among
I love commas, too, Jennifer, and tend to sprinkle them like salt.
* Its fun, and I feel that each comma deserves it’s own respected place.
Jennifer, I sort of have the same comma and dash issues!
Here is my pet peeve. In the last year our local newscasts have adopted present tense stories. For example, even if an incident occurred days ago they will read/say, “A local woman crashes her car into a tree and is saved as her puppy dials 911.”
To my ears that sounds like a bad joke – “A local woman walks into a bar…”
It drives me crazy – then I drive my husband crazy by flinching and grinding my teeth.
Mary, thanks for the post. I am polishing right now and getting ready to query again after a rewrite.
Or perhaps, “Woman drives car into tree, puppy calls Dominos and orders pizza…”
I really have to watch myself using “that” instead of “who” … and I think I’m finally getting “who” and “whom” down pat … though I have to watch myself. I struggle with some -ly words … like when to use close or closely, tight or tightly, bad or badly … there are so many different scenarios — I usually rework the sentences till I’m confident I have it correct … but it’s a challenge.
*I once read an acknowledgment page by Beth Moore, and she thanked her editing/publishing team for allowing her to use a more relaxed, conversational style in writing. 🙂 Made me smile.
Those -ly words, Shelli! I like them, and want to use them real bad, but fear I just use them really badly.
Ha ha! 🙂 I needed that. I know … I move it before the verb and if it doesn’t make sense, I figure I better omit the -ly. I don’t know. Case in point — He held her close … He held her closely. I guess either might work. Lol.
Unless, of course, he just had French onion soup and she doesn’t WANT to be held close, closely, or even at arm’s length.
Definitely … lol!! 🙂
Shelli, it’s said that ordering French onion soup on a first date is a sign of overweening confidence. I’ve yet to work that scenario into a story…just don’t have the stomach for it (or the soup, for that matter).
Thank you for this list. It is a tremendous help to those of us working on edits. Are there other edits you more experienced authors look out for in your manuscript? Love learning from those who have traversed the path of publishing before me.
Great list.
Are there new “acceptable” grammar rules that were once no-no’s?
I see the two words “But, yet” used so often now in major magazines, when one of the two should stand alone. The same goes for “But still.” My English professors would have
ripped my hand off if I’d ever used those two words together. “Redundant” will forever ring in my ears.
I realize that “everyone has their own idea” has become acceptable — even on national tv news stations — and it makes me cringe.
I wonder how book editors feel about this sort of thing?
Thanks for your great posts!
Deb
Recently, I’ve used a lot of ‘but, then…’. Is there an alternative to this? Or is it pretty cool?
It grinds my gears to use a plural form (their) following a singular subject (A person), but it seems to be a major faux pas in this gender-neutral age to use the correct singular form (his or hers).
*Is there any way to deal with this that is both grammatically and politically correct?
Carol. worry thyself not about politically correct. You’ll be chasing a chimera. Make it grammatically correct, and hang the consequences.
* Disclaimer – I’m not a publishing expert, but I’m really, really tired of the dictatorship of PC.