Self-Publishing Spelling & Grammar

Tips & Tricks

Writing in today's world takes many formats and styles. Some are more important than others. Whichever way you look at it, spelling and grammar are probably the most important part of your writing - practice Good Housekeeping! Tips and tricks are here to help.

Email: email generally attracts an informal style of writing between friends and non-business acquaintances - sometimes using colloquial, everyday language. On the other hand, we also have email that is being used in business and needs to have some form of business etiquette and professional courtesy. Naturally, when using email on a more personal level, pretty much anything goes and nobody gets upset or offended.

Business Writing: usually requires the writer to use a sense of decorum and professionalism in his thoughts and words, depending on whom he is writing to and on what subject. Most people seem to be able to automatically adjust their thoughts to suit either style whether it be personal or business related.

Book Writing: is a totally different style altogether, although it will lean towards "coloquial" more than anything else.

Consider the tone of your writing: Try to write as if you are talking to your readers directly. This will help you connect with your readers in a conversational tone, and at their level. It will give your writing a personality that can be interactive with your readers, keeping them intriqued throughout your piece.

Use simple text with easy-to-understand sentences. Don't get bogged down in big words your readers aren't likely to understand. It's hard to enjoy reading your material if a dictionary has to be constantly at the ready. The majority of readers, however, will soon get bored and not even bother with a dictionary - why should they? The onus is on you to ensure your writing is delivered in the right way.

Focus on the style of your writing: whatever you are writing is a reflection on you as the author. Grammar & spelling errors, for instance, can leave the reader thinking you don't know much about what you're writing about - or worse, that you simply lack the knowledge of how to properly use the English language. Your reader is likely to lose interest in what you are trying to convey if it is disorganized and lacks the basic knowledge of grammar, spelling and punctuation. There are always going to be some exceptions, of course.

Grammatical exceptions: depending on what you are writing about, you are always going to get occasions when proper grammar gets thrown out the window. A typical example would be when you are quoting something a character has said - in his or her own dialect. It would not be right to correct this dialect into proper grammar. Not only will the writing lose its effectiveness, it will also fail to convey the mood and inflection of the character in question. As an author, you have to use a suitable mix of proper grammar and street talk in your writing. Lose one reader and you may lose them all.

Write directly to your reader: While your reader's interpretation may not seem fair, it's a simple fact that their interpretation will inevitably affect the influence and impact you will have with your readers. Bad grammar and spelling might actually work if you are trying to match a character's personality style. Otherwise, it simply makes you look dumb to the normal reader. Spelling is the most important issue here. Grammatical errors can easily be glossed over, but spelling errors can't!

Spelling errors: are not forgiveable under any circumstances. However, over the past few years we have introduced a new terms that seems to suggest forgiveness for spelling errors: typograpgical errors - typos. People seem to view typos as little errors that we can't be bothered to go back and correct, and that if we had seen them, we would have known they were errors. Typos are something we can usually get away with in daily communication. In book writing, though, there is no excuse for either a typo or spelling mistake. That is why we have proof readers, right? It is better ,though, not to make them in the first place. So check your work often and correct as you go.

Watch your punctuation: punctuation or other corrective forms of writing should not take away the actual message you want to convey. Keep the message in mind and try to convey it in full and proper form. Any corrections should not affect the meaning of your intended content. One of the most confusing aspects of punctuation is whether a portion of text needs a comma after it or not. Unless you hold a Master's in the English language, you are always going to be thinking... should I or shouldn't I? If in doubt, leave it out!

Writing for the Internet reader: it's very important to test how it will look on the majority of screens. For instance, your use of bulleted copy may appear attractive on your screen. But it's very important to know how it might look on the receiver's screen.

The Internet is usually viewed through two or three main browser programs. Two such programs are Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Both browser generally interpret the html code of pages pretty much the same all the time. However, there are times when one does something a little different to the other. For instance, at times you might see Explorer's bullet-pointed paragraphs spaced nice and evenly between points, having interpreted a small part of the html code correctly. Mozilla Firefox, though, seems to have ignored the small part of the code and not applied the paragraph spacing as intended.

There are many examples of subtle difference between Explorer and Firefox and how they interpret the htnl code they see. Be sure to test your writing on more than one computer to make sure it looks as you intended.

One of the most common oversights when writing documents and articles for Internet is the size of your text. Most people will write in a standard 12 point size text and it looks great on most computers you check it on. However, many people have their page text set to a higher size setting for whatever reasons. When the text size is increased it tend to throw out all your beautiful formatting, and putting graphics in places they should not be.

One work-around to the problem of text size, is to not set it in point sizes. Set them in pixels instead. Instead of 12pt use 12px. Pixels are a set size and cannot be changed so easily as point size text can.

Whatever format you may settle on, never send out your material without testing it. This can be done by sending yourself a test email to catch any mistakes or errors.

If possible, you may care to upload your work to a web site server and have a few people go check it out for you. People just LOVE to find mistakes of other people and they will indeed go over your work with a fine tooth-comb. Don't get upset if they come back with a laundry list of errors etc. - after all, this is what you WANT, right?

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