grammar

introduction

Words.

You see them everywhere. On road signs, paperwork - heck, you're reading words right now. This sentence you're reading is composed entirely of words.

We live in a world controlled by words. Our laws are written down. If you think about it, even our names are words. Without words, you wouldn't know what to call yourself. Since this is on Wattpad, those of you reading this have a special appreciation for words.

We're all taught to read and reproduce words at a young age. We've all developed those skills over the years, but along the way, some of you have forgotten the basics of stringing words together into stories.

The other day, I was scrolling through this fanfiction with an amazing plot, thinking, hey! This isn't half-bad as the summary suggested! Then I stumbled upon a single line of dialogue that ruined the book for me. Those words? "Your late."

I clicked out of the book and removed it from my library.

Believe it or not, these kinds of errors in grammar are incredibly common. Common meaning I have seen this kind of mistake in 80% of the books I read on this hellsite. This fact saddens me because most of you have truly amazing things to say in your writing, but the horrible use of grammar just ruins the experience of reading it for me. It doubly sucks for you because most of you want to publish an actual book, and the mistakes you're making lower the chances of your story being chosen by publishers.

Think about it. Have you ever read a book with grammar or spelling errors? (That was a rhetorical question.)

But, as the lovely -Luminous-Jones pointed out, some books do have grammar errors. Your work doesn't need to be 100% perfect for it to be published, this is written simply to help your correct grammar errors. It's totally okay if you missed some, this is one of the first stages of your book, after all.

So, being the amazing (and rather vain) person I am, I decided to help you all out by writing this guide to grammar, spelling, and various other basic skills you should relearn before clicking that publish button.

Now, before we begin, there are a few things I need you lovely people to be aware of.

One, I'm not, in any way, an expert. I'm in the 8th grade while writing this, and have a long journey to travel to be a professional writer. I don't know all the rules when it comes to writing. This means that if a topic I'm not aware of gets requested, I'll have to spend some extra time researching it and finding things to hate on.

Two, I swear occasionally. If you're not fond of cussing, find another option - make a clean version of this book or something (but give me the rights, of course, I'm not suggesting plagiarism).

Three, if you're struggling, I suggest you download Grammarly (not mine). It's a free application that checks your grammar and spelling, available both as an app and an extension on your computer. The platform works very well, although you have to remember that it's a machine and isn't always correct.

Remember: if, at any time, you don't understand what I'm saying, comment on what questions you have and I'll do my best to answer them.

So, let's get to the boring learning stuff, shall we?