Barbara V Evers

Courtesy of Morguefile.com Welcome to the 5th post of  Don't Let Errors Ruin Your Submissions ! You might think your manuscript's fascinating story potential should rise above any typos and poor grammar, but the truth is agents and publishers receive an onslaught of submissions. They give most of these submissions a few seconds before deciding whether to pass or keep reading. That means any red flags can prompt a rejection. Poor grammar can be a red flag! I say "can" because there will always be the exception to the rule. Counting on being the exception to the rule is NOT a good idea. You need to clean up your submission. Don't let errors ruin your submission's chances! This week, we're taking a look at Rule #6 which focuses on quotations. Use proper punctuation to integrate a quotation into a sentence. If the introductory material ends in "thinks," "saying," or some other verb indicating expression, use a comma and quotation marks. Let

Welcome to the 4th post of Don't Let Errors Ruin Your Submissions ! You might think your manuscript's fascinating story potential should rise above any typos and poor grammar, but the truth is agents and publishers receive an onslaught of submissions. They give most of these submissions a few seconds before deciding whether to pass or keep reading. That means any red flags can prompt a rejection. Poor grammar can be a red flag! I say "can" because there will always be the exception to the rule. Counting on being the exception to the rule is NOT a good idea. You need to clean up your submission. Don't let errors ruin your submission's chances! We've been going through the 11 most beneficial grammar rules for you to use in your writing, and today we're going to look at rule #5 regarding using the apostrophe to create a possessive noun. To indicate possession, end a singular noun with an apostrophe followed by an "s." Otherwise, the noun's f

Before I continue the Don't Let Errors Ruin Your Submission series, I wanted to share some  EXCITING NEWS!! My short story, "The Magic of the Mountain," has been nominated for the Palmetto Scribe Award for best short story by a South Carolina author! I would be honored if you will visit this link to  cast your vote for my story . Also, please share the link with anyone who wants to support local, independent authors. Thank you to the people of Atomacon for this nomination! If you want to read the story, it's in my current short story collection,  Pieces of Her,  available for 2.99 as an ebook or 7.99 as a paperback. Now back to regularly scheduled programming  You might think your manuscript's fascinating story potential should rise above any typos and poor grammar, but the truth is agents and publishers receive an onslaught of submissions. They give most of these submissions a few seconds before deciding whether to pass on it or keep reading. That means any red

Last week, I started a blog series about avoiding the dreaded rejection letter by recognizing and correcting errors in your writing.  Today, we're going to take a deeper look at one of the 11 rules of grammar mentioned last time. This rule has lots of elements, so that's why it gets its own post. If this rule isn't the one you want explained, never fear, I will cover all 11 in this series. Missed last week's post and the 11 rules of grammar? Find it here . We need to talk about commas. I know. I know. You either love or hate commas. I get it. If you're not sure when you need one, it's hard to like them. I actually love commas when used properly. I get really annoyed when someone leaves out a necessary comma. Why? Because it complicates my comprehension when reading. I find myself reading the sentence more than once which throws me out of the story. I want to submerge in a story and not notice the writing. Rule 1: Joining Two Independent Clauses To join two indep

You might think your manuscript's fascinating story potential should rise above any typos and poor grammar, but the truth is agents and publishers receive an onslaught of submissions. They give most of these submissions a few seconds before deciding whether to pass or keep reading. That means any red flags can prompt a rejection. Poor grammar can be a red flag! I say "can" because there will always be the exception to the rule. Counting on being the exception to the rule is NOT a good idea. You need to clean up your submission. Don't let errors ruin your submission's chances! We need to talk about grammar. I know. I know. Not your favorite topic, but I'm going to do my best to simplify it. Today, I'll share the top eleven rules, identified by freshman college English professors, that most students violate in their writing. Next week, I'll start breaking down the rules into bite-sized chunks to help you out. This will be an ongoing series for several po