Without traditional publishers assigning editors to new authors, who’s watching the grammar store?

Whenever I’m ready to do a detailed edit on a manuscript I run the word search for was and that and had especially had been.  Usually, I find far too many of them.  Their elimination forces a writer to restructure the sentence and actually ends being better.  You can’t eliminate them all but I’d say you can kill 90% of that, 3/4 of was and most hads

I recently found a wonderful site which demonstrates the problem.  At AutoWizard Editing Critic you can paste in your best 500 words and it will automatically find all kinds of stuff you’ve missed.  Try it.

Editors at traditional publishing houses have kept the grammar consistent.  We know eBook providers have no editors.  When eBook sales surpass hard copy books the grammar is going to be all over the map.  People I’ve met through my Writers Group say their friend edits their work.  “You are such a fab writer!”  “I can’t see anything wrong with this.”  “I love you.”  Bad idea. So is self-editing.  Style guides for writers abound and you’d think people getting into eBooks would have one or two at hand.  Strunk and White-The Elements of Style, and the Chicago Manual Of Style are two of the better known ones.

Writing, that is the creative process, is easy for me.  The editing is where the work is and I’ve spent countless hours on my stories.  Everyone wants to be a writer, but few will put in the required work.  The devil is in the details and the details are editing.