Grammar

I complain in a lot of my reviews (and my reviews of reviewers) about grammar.  I can understand Amazon reviewers not being perfect; it's an informal setting, they're not professionals, etc.  Although I still think people ought to take pride in work they put out there in front of the public.  (Be cautious of spell checkers, though.  Fantasy names can cause all sorts of problems...)

Professional writers, on the other hand, have no excuse.  Presumably you've been through your draft more than once.  If not, you should have been.  Otherwise, there will likely be major holes in your story, in addition to grammatical errors.

Here are a couple of errors that I particularly hate (and yes, I know the bullet points are not complete sentences):

• "between you and I" -- that's just incorrect
• "taller than me" or "older than me" -- again, just incorrect
• "tell Sue or I" -- I'm starting to sound like a broken record here...
• "lead" is not the past tense of the verb "to lead;" it's "led"
• not understanding comparative and superlative forms of adjectives (noble, nobler, noblest versus beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful, but not "more noble")
• using the word "weary" when you mean "leery" or "wary" (the first one means "tired" whereas the second and third mean "cautious")
• subject-verb disagreement, especially with compound subjects (it's "the cookies and milk were delicious," not "the cookies and milk was delicious")
• using a mix of British and American English; I don't care which one you use, but pick one and stick to it

A lot of times, people don't know that they don't know.  One thing that is refreshing is that I cannot recall an instance of quotation marks used for emphasis; people seem to get this right in novels.

Bottom line: everyone knows someone who is good with grammar.  Have him or her read your work and correct it.  If you know this is one of your weak areas, frequent the website linked to below, or others like it on the web:

Grammar Girl

If you need more information about proper use of punctuation, you can also pick up a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, though be forewarned that it highlights some rules of English punctuation that are true in Britain but not in the US (rules for commas in lists are different, etc.):