Forgive Us Our Comma Sins: Editing Mistakes

Forgive Us Our Comma Sins: Editing Mistakes

Let’s talk about editing a novel. Do typos, editing mistakes, and comma sins in a book you love, bother you? For me, not really. At least not if the story pulls me in. Some of the best books I’ve read had a handful of errors, and I couldn’t have cared less. Besides, I know the author is human.

But when the mistakes show up in my own work? That’s when I want to pull my hair out. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a punctuation wizard. And sure, I know the difference between their, there, and they’re, but often my fingers don’t cooperate. And don’t get me started on lie, lay, and laid. My brain just throws a dart and hopes it lands on the right one.

Commas are my personal nemesis. I’ll be entirely convinced one belongs in a sentence, only for my editor to strike it out. Or I’ll swear there’s no comma needed, and then… boom, there it is, added back in. Since commas can be stylistic as much as grammatical, by the end of a manuscript, my head is spinning. And, holy cow, those damn semicolons. I’ve had knock-down, drag-out fights over too many semicolons. I hate them.

Now, you might say, “But you have an editor. Shouldn’t they catch all that?” Maybe. But editors are human, too, and even the best can’t catch every single mistake. Especially, in a 100,000-word romance novel. My first book, Angel Redeemed, went through at least ten of my own read-throughs, two editors, multiple revisions… and it still hit print with sneaky errors. You might also be thinking, “Well then, what about Grammarly?” Guess what. Not even editing software is perfect. Sometimes it misses things, and sometimes it even suggests the wrong fix.

No more semicolons!

I’ve heard that the big five publishers run a manuscript through about eleven rounds of editing before release. And yes, their books are usually quite polished, but you still might find the occasional error. Which begs the question: what’s a self-published or small press author supposed to do? The answer: fix mistakes as they’re caught and hope that readers are forgiving.

In my case, since a small press published my first two books, I have to ask the publisher for corrections. Luckily, they care about quality and are typically open to changes. But this leads to one of the most significant differences between small press and self-publishing—control.

When you self-publish, you can fix things as quickly as they’re found. You might get more flak for the mistakes in the first place, but you can also make the corrections instantly. And I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my stories. That’s why I’m branching off and choosing to self-publish the rest of my Watchers and Warriors series, along with my Nightshade Shifters series and Wicked Immortals series. The more control I have, the better I sleep at night.

So here’s my plea to all readers: Please give authors a little grace. Writing a 100,000-word novel is no small feat, and catching every single error is nearly impossible. And if you do stumble across a mistake in one of my books? Let me know, nicely. I just might jump on fixing it faster than you can say “comma splice.” But remember, some things that look like mistakes are stylistic choices. And my editor uses the Chicago Manual of Style. So, if you don’t know that that is, then you might be wrong. And, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you might need a little something more in your life than being the grammar police. In the end, the best answer might be just to sit back, ignore the occasional mistake, and enjoy the story instead.