I just binge-read a fairly basic space opera slash bildungsroman. Found a few missing words and typos, nothing out of the ordinary for a published book.
Then looked through the Amazon revues and half of them were going on about the apparently glaring grammatical errors all over the page, plus blatant disregard of the common comma.
Oh, boy. No point in claiming I wasn't reading with my writing hat on, because I was. If this stuff is so bad I should have spotted it. Okay; it is possible the author saw an editor between the time those reviews were left and when I read it -- that's the thing about eBooks, they can be revised multiple times, nigh-invisibly.
But it also might mean that I am so lousy at grammar I have no business writing novels.
I've wondered that before. I've worried enough about it that I've tried to study up. Doesn't work. Heck, I get lost before I've even finished the definition of a problem. I hit something like "...a subject complement or predicative of the subject is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb (copula)..." and I lose all track of even what it was I was originally trying to look up.
Yes, I've read Strunk and White and I have a copy close at hand.
I even use a fairly advanced (well, fairly expensive) grammar checker that not only flags problems but pops up a whole window explaining what rule it is and how it works.
Which I can't make head nor tails of, half the time.
I am at a loss here. My grammar checker keeps telling me there aren't enough commas and I need to add more. But when I send a sample text to speech output it pauses every few words with an affect like a motor with a clogged fuel line.
Probably good I'm taking a short break from writing.
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