Grammar Commando

Every once in a while, I'll see a mini-debate erupt on a blog site about the importance of grammar. I remember once, about a year and a half ago, Jude sent me to a site where one writer was pontificating that the rules of grammar were really immaterial to a good story. After all, isn't that what editors are for?

Yes and no.

I think the most important "rule" to remember actually simplifies this argument and has to do with story. Anything that takes the reader OUT of the story is bad. Keeping them in your world is good. Hence, even if an editor likes the serial comma and a comma after even short introductory clauses, if you are consistent, after a page or two it fades into the background as your story takes hold.

However, if you have many sloppy errors--basic grammar rules that most writers should know, that indicate to an editor you didn't bother to have your manuscript proofed or you don't care . . . or you don't ever show your work to anyone who can tell you what you don't know . . . or you are sloppy or you rushed to send it off . . . it does and will irritate. Each time it's a tiny irritant, like a piece of sand in the eye. It jolts out of story. Once or twice . . . fine. Over and over, less so.

The flip side to all this is that perfection is impossible. So you can't agonize over the manuscript you mailed that you later discovered has a typo on page 7.

For me, the grammar issue I struggled with the most was which/that. I went to school during some of my formative years on a small British-controlled island (Bermuda). The Brits do some grammar rules differently. I believe that is one of them, along with a handful of others that I occasionally still struggle with (dangling participle at the end there!). That also drifts into my spelling. I never get the American spelling of gray/grey correct.

How about you? What grammar rules drive you nuts? And how much do you fret over your manuscript proofing?