Lesson One: Aesthetics.
I'm sure you've all heard what it takes to "be a writer." A firm grasp of your characters. A sense of what you can and can't do. The talent to create an interesting voice. Well, one of the most important things in your writing is going to be your grammar. Sadly, schools seem to focus less and less on grammar, and the result is tragic. Language is an ever-adapting thing, but truly knowing one will help you tremendously.
I'm sure you've all had an experience where you find a mispelled word in a novel, or a comic book, or whatever you're reading at the time. Seeing that, more often than not, will pull out of the story's world and back into your own. "Breaking the spell" is a term I hear for it rather often. So, you should all grasp how important it is to make sure that you don't have these.
And of course, nobody's perfect. There are typos. I've probably made one already, and just haven't noticed. But there are rules you can learn and tactics you can use to considerably cut down on your mistakes.
First off, read, read, read. The more you read, the more grammar you'll see. Much of my grammatical knowledge is based not upon classes in school, but upon the books that I've read. I come from a very "southern" family. Out of everyone in my family, I have the weakest accent, and often no accent at all. I spell, "neighbour," "colour," and "favour." This isn't because of schooling, this is because I've been reading books since I was four years old. It really will help you.
Take a basic linguistics class if you can. Learn the International Pronunciation Alphabet. Learn about how we learn language, how languages come about, how they can be taught. Learn descriptive rules, and ignore prescriptive ones.
Take classes on grammar, if at all possible. You won't find everything you need in books. Know the difference between who, whom, that, which. Know when it is acceptable to say "fish" and when it is acceptable to say "fishes." Learn your tenses. Learn your and you're. Learn there, their, and they're. To, two, too. Always be careful with your homophones.
Learn when punctuation is appropriate. Commas, semicolons, colons, periods, question marks, and exclamation points. Use exclamation points sparingly. When in doubt over a comma and a semicolon, use a comma.
Subject-verb agreement. I cannot stress how important this is. Do not fall for the common tricks found. Each person thinks. Each of them thinks. Each think. They each think. This team plays baseball. Those team members play left field.
Take a foreign language. Studying grammar in other languages will help you exponentially with your own. Be careful, however. Oftentimes, studying in a romance languages can aid your grammar, but harm your spelling. I took seven french classes in three years. Most of the French-English cognates I know, I know spell in the French manner. I can't tell you how many times I've spelled "prononciation" and other similar words. It's a terrible habit.
Document programs such as Microsoft Word come with both a spell check and a grammar check. Use these to your advantage, but do not rely on them. For example, a fellow in one of my classes used the phrase, "groves of people," but meant "droves of people." Because "groves" is a word, Spell Check didn't catch it.
Print your document off. It sounds crazy, but I promise, you will catch more mistakes reading something on paper than by reading it on a computer screen.
Have a "beta tester." This is someone who reads your work, trying to catch your mistakes. He or she will find mistakes that you missed, and will often offer insight into the story itself, not just the grammar.
Few people can honestly say that they have perfect grammar. I am not one of them. Likely, neither are you. Use this to your advantage. You don't need to point out the differences between a gerund phrase and a participal phrase, so long as you can conjugate them properly. Don't stress out over prepositional rules; while ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong, it is so common place that editors will often leave it be. Sometimes, it even sounds more awkward to be right than it does to be wrong. Who is that for? For whom is that?
So while proper grammar will do nothing but help you on your path to becoming a professional author, don't completely stress out over it. The average person has a basic grasp of grammar just from learning to speak a language as a child. You don't need to be able to diagram complex sentences to make your work appealing. Jes dun type liek dis n xpekt 2 b taken sirusly.
For more help involving grammar, check out Strunk and White's
The Elements of Style. It is regarded as the definitive guide for English grammatical rules, and you should be able to find it easily in bookstores. I personally recommend either the illustrated edition or the cheap, five dollar pocket edition. You can take it with you anywhere to look something up on the spot, and the book itself is actually a really good read.
Also, here's a link to a list of common mispellings in the English language. Read it. Know it. It will do wonders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_mispellings_in_English Next time: Lessons from Daniel Wallace, author of the novel
Big Fish.
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