Spelling and grammar can make or break how well your story reads

and

sells. Even if you’re not concerned with sales, you should be cautious about driving readers away. Many people have a hard time reading things that are heavily laden with typos and other errors. Others simply refuse to torment themselves with horribly written stories. There are few who will tolerate it if the story is good, but you have to get them to that point first.

Spelling - Dictionary

Unless you’re writing your first draft by hand, spelling shouldn’t be an issue. Most online writing programs include a spell checker at the very least. I would recommend having a printed or online dictionary opened in your browser tab at all times. Google Docs has a dictionary and add-ons for additional dictionaries. While you may think this is sufficient, it isn't. Some words, or tenses of words, are not recognized for whatever reason. Most online dictionaries will give you past, present, future, and other tenses that you may need to use. It’s essential that the dictionary you choose to use is accurate and reputable. My go-to website is usually Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. You can look up the definition of a word and there is a peach-colored link that will take you to the thesaurus for that word. It's pretty nifty and saves a few seconds of your time. Even if you’re completely confident in your ability to spell and use proper tenses, I can guarantee there is some ridiculous rule in English that you, and probably the rest of the world, don’t know about.

Spelling - Thesaurus

The next thing you will want by your side is a thesaurus. I cannot stress enough that this is

not

optional. Overusing the same descriptive words will turn your fantastic manuscript into a pile of regurgitated drivel. My personal rule for writing is to not use the same words to describe a noun or action more than once a page. That rule does not apply to absolutely every word, obviously. At times, it’s harder to follow because he, she, it, they, them, her, his, him, etc. are used to replace the names of the people involved. However, your created beings can be referred to in a multitude of ways including the words used to describe their physical or emotional state. I’ll give you a few examples using Jayne and John as the subjects.

Jayne

looked out the window waiting for John to arrive.

Her

long, black hair had been neatly curled into two buns atop her head. The chime of the doorbell startled the

hazel eyed beauty

; the decision to dress as Princess Leia was instantly regretted. Nervously, the

princess

approached the door; the white gown dusted the floor as

she

walked to receive his arrival.

In terms of words for describing things, they are a lot easier to play with once you’ve gotten your thesaurus. Repetitive wording can make your manuscript dull, especially for fight scenes in fantasy novels. I’d suggest creating a list of alternative words or phrases to replace those that you notice yourself using often. After you’ve completed your work, use the “Find” option (ctrl + f) and type in the word you’re searching for. It will return how many times that word appears in the document. With Google Docs, it will automatically highlight all of them and it gives you the option to make it case sensitive, replace, or replace all. I find this to be amazingly useful when editing for others as well.

Numbers and Percents

Numbers and percents are probably the least thought about things when writing. They’re often thrown in as numerals versus words. Depending on what you’re writing and what format you’re writing in, it can be a big no-no to use numerals. I won’t go into details between the difference in APA and MLA formats for writing.

In general, numbers zero to ten should be spelled out, or any number that can be written in two words: twenty-one, fifty-five, ninety-nine, or really anything under 101. Personally, I follow that same rule but I also write out numbers that end in zero; again, these are usually two-word numerals but not always. I’d never bother to write out 250 million in words and it doesn’t follow the two-word rule.

Dollar amounts would generally follow the same rule. You should write out anything  under one dollar. Writing $0.25 looks weird

unless

you’re listing the price for items in a store. Twenty-five cents or 25¢ works, but the cent sign seems as though it’s becoming obsolete in modern day so it’s not as common to use. Again, anything over one hundred can be written in numbers.

When writing years, numerals are okay to use except when they are at the beginning of a sentence. I’ve rarely seen anyone put a year at the

very

beginning of the sentence. Typically they all cheat by typing things such as, “The year 1912…” or “In the year 1999…” and quite honestly, I don’t blame them!

For numbers containing decimals, you do not have to write them out. Things like Pi (𝜋) can be written as 3.141592. Percents function the same and follow the zero to one hundred rule, but they can also be written as 25% if you choose. Just remember to stay consistent!

Time is very easy and you do not have to write it out if you choose not to. You can say ten o’clock in the morning, 10AM (A.M., a.m., am) the space between the number and the letters isn’t needed. My personal preference is writing time out completely using “o’clock” or writing it as 12:16pm/PM. I’m not fond of using the periods to separate the letters or a space to separate the numbers from the letters. Whatever works best for you is fine.

There are many more rules for writing numbers in various situations. You can refer back to the MLA, APA, Chicago Style, IEEE, or ASA format guidebooks for exactly what you need depending on if you’re writing for school, work, or novels. For quick references and a detailed list of exceptions, I would suggest the following:

www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/writing_numbers.html