User blog:DrBobSmith/Basic Spell and Grammar Checking

Dear Prospective Pasta Cookers,

Nobody is going to take your work seriously if it is riddled with spelling and grammar errors. Do yourselves and us a favor and get to minimally decent English first.

First, compose your pasta offline using a word processing program. If you can get it, I suggest Microsoft Word. If you can't, I suggest OpenOffice Writer. It is free! Yes, Free for download.

This has many advantages. The programs have basic spelling and grammar checks. They also allow you to save your story on your local computer so you have it even if the site Admins decide to delete it.

Once you have your story composed, proofread it. Look for mistakes. You will have them. Read it out loud. Take this time to go through the story and edit out parts that really aren't necessary. Be ruthless. If it doesn't drive the Pasta forward then delete it.

Use free online grammar checking websites. I recommend www.grammarly.com and https://www.scribens.com. Use them both. They find different errors.

Grammarly has "Premium" alerts. Getting those costs major bucks. However, you can get the benefit of those alerts for free. Paste your story one paragraph at a time into Grammarly. If there are premium alerts in the paragraph, fix them. If needed, delete part of that one paragraph to find what sentence the error is in. Sometimes you have to even delete part of a sentence.

This is a REALLY great time to edit. While you are reviewing your story one paragraph at a time, consider whether the paragraph is even necessary. Check each sentence in the paragraph. Does that drive the pasta forward? If it doesn't, delete it.

Correct your Word/OpenOffice Writer copy as you go. Make sure that is as clean as possible.

Occasionally, Grammarly makes mistakes. However, it is right more than 95% of the time. I would try to get to only 5% of the number of errors you had initially.

If you go to this point with your story, you will get far better reception of it in the Writer's Workshop.

DrBobSmith (talk) 21:51, July 1, 2018 (UTC)