5 Most Common, Novel-Infiltrating Grammar Mistakes

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The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Today, Allison VanNest, from Grammarly, highlights some common grammar mistakes:

For many writers, each November is a new chance to write a complete novel—at least 50,000 words in 30 days—during National Novel Writing Month. In 2013, Grammarly joined the fray with GrammoWriMo, a group novel project. Together, nearly 300 participants wrote more than 130,000 words.

As you know by now, the breakneck nature of NaNoWriMo leaves very little time for editing. To reach the goal, every writer needs to put at least 1,667 words on the page every day. The resulting rough draft is, in many cases, really rough.

When Grammarly crunched the GrammoWriMo group novel in our automated proofreading program, we discovered a ton of comma confusion and grammar goofs. Here are our top five mistakes (and how you can avoid them):

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