The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72514   Message #1263789
Posted By: GUEST,Isaac Azimuth
03-Sep-04 - 06:19 PM
Thread Name: BS: Literary challenge..go for it!!
Subject: RE: BS: Literary challenge..go for it!!
"Editors take care of grammar and spelling for all publications."

MG displays ignorance of the way the book and magazine publishing world has been for several decades. Max Perkins helped groom writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, but that was in the 1920s. Editors don't do that anymore.

There are plenty of writers wanting to be published who are good at editing and proofreading their own material. Editors read the first page or two of a manuscript and if they encounter two or three errors in spelling and grammar, they evaluate the manuscript as "unprofessional," put it in the return envelop (you did include an SASE, didn't you?) with a pre-printed rejection slip, and toss it in the out-box. Good grammar and spelling are the basic tools of a writer's trade. If they won't spend the time to learn that, no editor will bother with them.