Andrew Norriss
Andrew Norriss: 7. Spelling and punctuation
And the last thing I do is go through the spelling, grammar and punctuation. I’ll have been paying it some attention through all the previous drafts of course but this is where I go through it as carefully as I can because a misspelt word or a missing question mark can stop a reader in his tracks and break the spell quicker than anything - quite apart from making it look as I haven’t bothered.
As an ex teacher, and someone who has earned his living from writing for more than twenty years, I regard myself as above average literate, but when one of my books comes back from the copy editor I always find they have spotted an alarming number of mistakes. I’ve never quite established whether you walk round a room or around it, and I’m a little hazy still on the semi-colon, but I have learnt to accept this. And that some rules are made to be broken. Like beginning a sentence with a conjunction. Or some sentences not having a verb. Rules matter, but the most important thing is whether the words have the effect I intended.
Andrew Norriss
