Grammar, punctuation and spelling – Do they really matter?

Successful writing is about good writing. Good writing requires a mastery of the language in which you want to write. And even more if it’s not your first language. English is no exception. Grammatical, punctuation and spelling mistakes can make all the difference between a good stuff and a slush item.

I recently read an article Grammatical Griping by Victoria Grossack at Fiction Fix, which I want to share if you are interested in furthering your basics about punctuation, spelling and grammar. For many it may sound like “it doesn’t matter much”. Whether English is your first language or not, there’s still something that you can add up to what you already have in your knowledge stock.

Here’s in a nutshell what Victoria Grossack talks about:

– Punctuation, which has to do with the proper use of periods and commas, colons and semi-colons, dashes and hyphens, apostrophes, helps us convey the meaning we want to; not something else.

– Misspellings can be as funny as irritating in what otherwise could be a good read. Spellcheckers cannot always catch all our mistakes.

– Subject-verb agreement, use of pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs are all that can make up grammatical mistakes if not used properly.

There’s also a number of links that offer more in-depth treatment of the issues mentioned above. An example is How to Use English Punctuation Correctly. Another one is How to Use Apostrophes.

Incidentally The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes is another interesting and informative site mentioned at Nick Daws’ Help With Apostrophes.

Hope that makes sense.

6 Comments

  1. Wakish July 9, 2007
  2. beccy July 10, 2007
  3. alfaking July 10, 2007
  4. Angie July 10, 2007
  5. alfaking July 11, 2007
  6. Angie July 11, 2007

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