I've written an entire chapter on my thoughts on grammar Nazis. One of the final conclusions of the chapter is that you should do everything in your power to fix the kinds of things that upset your readers. Grammar Nazis are, love it or hate it, a part of your reading audience. You should, for all intent and purposes, try to fix your grammar, because there are people who, upon reaching certain annoying things, become annoyed. Go figure.

But what kind of things are the annoying things? Everyone has their trigger, and until you spend $1000 and hire a professional editor you can't expect your writing to hold up to the rigors of perfection. So, at some point and time, you need to focus on the particular things that trigger people into an over the top rage. That is what this chapter is for. If you want to hardcore edit your chapter and avoid some of the worst mistakes, I recommend you take a look at my chapter titled 'Editing 201'. However, if you just don't want to trigger your readers, here is the list of 10 things you need to fix before posting your work to the public.

I don't think anything here is something I haven't said before, but this list is probably the most important points you need to hit to prevent pissing off your readers. It is a list I'll admit I haven't honored in this very book (and have received comments as a result), but if you want happy readers, think about fixing these things ASAP. Nothing induces reader rage quite like...

When two words sound the same and have basically the same purpose it can be quite easy to mix them up, yet hours of people's rage and obnoxious replies have been dedicated to this harmless mistake. To the people whom this drives crazy, it is an inexcusable act of writing suicide, a rage-inducing murder of the precious English language that "even babies" should be able to avoid making. To the rest of us who don't give a crap, we just shake our heads and sigh.

I won't say that I'm above making this mistake myself. Typically, this mistake can easily be caught and vetted by the current spelling/grammar software, especially after you supplement it with something like Grammarly. Although I suspect whether some people use spell check and grammar software, let alone extra programs, prior to putting their work online. However, even if they did use all the bells and whistles, Grammarly doesn't always catch these mistakes 100% of the time.

Therefore, if you don't want to receive the obnoxious:

"Ah, ahem... it's their, not there, I thought YOU of all people would realize this. Now excuse me while I enjoy the smell of my own farts."

Then you may want to take the added effort of doing a search specifically for those 7 golden words. Once you make sure they are all used correctly, then you can post with the peace of mind that you will receive one less obnoxious comment.

In the past, I gave the advice that if you're going to write, concentrate on past tense and get good at that. I'd argue that while bad past tense hurts a story, bad present tense makes a story literally unreadable. A part of the reason for this is simple. Writing in present tense still requires you to flip to past. Whenever you're referring to something that happened, even a few moments ago, you'll have to use past tense, and then flip to present again when you're back to the now. It's obnoxiously easy to make this mistake.

And worst, if you're doing something like say, writing a present tense novel and at the same time you are writing past tense novels, it becomes a nightmare. I used to have no problem with my tenses, but now that I've started flipping between the tenses, getting them correct is almost impossible. So, I typically recommend you stick to past... because everything in past is in the past. The only thing "present" always occurs within quotation marks (dialogue), thus making it really easy to not make that kind of error.

The reason I'm talking about avoiding those errors is that those errors infuriate certain people. Get good with your tenses, and if you aren't good, check, check, and triple check. Decide on a tense and get good writing in it, because nothing pulls people out of a writing quicker than frequent tense changes.

I could write another section for Point of View changes, from flipping between first and third to the "head hopping" phenomenon of third person limited, but I'll leave that as an aside here.

I use Microsoft word, so even the sentence above was instantly repaired the second I hit the spacebar. However, presuming your Microsoft Word doesn't like you (maybe you used express installation, what do you take him for, quick and easy?) or you use some weird word processor for the 90s, alot... see, had to change the word again... that word is not actually a word. And if you turn the word to allot because your word processor doesn't see that as incorrect, you're even more wrong.

Allot is like allotting someone time. It means providing or making available. That isn't the word you're trying to use when you use the word alot. Rather, you're trying to say two words, 'a lot'.

Personally, I think it should be a word. I see absolutely no reason we can't conjugate it. BUT... English hasn't done that yet and they probably have some linguistic rule shoved up their butt that makes it a word they refuse to tolerate. Either way, the point is there. You can have a lot of things. There is nothing called alot.

If your processor isn't making the correction every time you write this mistake, then make sure to make the correction yourself. It should show up as wrong on any spelling and grammar site. And if you take it the next step and make it allot... well, don't... just don't...

Ain'ts not a word either, but that gets slammed so much as a spoken word I don't think it needs to be addressed as a written word. You can actually use ain't in someone's dialogue all you want. It will certainly make their voice stand out.

I'll be surprised if I'm the first person you hear this from, but few people "like" textspeak among my generation. Few readers who like to, you know, read, happen to like textspeak. In fact, the only time I ever hear textspeak is when someone is mocking textspeak. I know textspeak more for being hated than for being something people actually use.

So, you know, don't use it. It isn't a way people talk. It isn't grammatically correct either. You can argue it's a more efficient means of conveying the same information, but not everyone understands textspeak in entirety. Replacing random "yous" with u's is just weird, and if you go much farther than that, you're going to be speaking a language that is bound to cut out some of your audience.

That said, as I've mentioned in other chapters, if you are trying to write textspeak to specifically target a textspeak audience, I won't stop you. If you actually are showing texts being sent between two characters who happen to use text speak, I also don't mind. However, I think incorporating textspeak into your writing because "it feels more natural" or some other excuse is only going to enrage that certain group of readers.

It should come as no surprise that 90% of my advice on how not to annoy the grammar Nazis of your story are pulled straight from my 'editing 201' chapter, as the most common editing mistakes tend to coincide with reader's pet peeves. In this case, homophones are things that sound alike. Here's one I make a lot, Sight and Site. Another obvious one would be To, and Too. Technically, this includes there, their etc.... but I gave them their own criteria for good reason.

Naturally, to the grammatically sensitive, confusing affect and effect are unforgivable. Like murder where they are the victims and your words are a knife stabbing them repeatedly in the ear. Avoid the big ones and you can at least keep back quite a few of the angriest comments.

I mentioned in my chapter "Git Gud" that a lot of young writers tend to not capitalize the titles of their chapters and books. I saw responses from people saying that even if the writer puts up something stating they chose not to capitalize as a stylistic choice, they still wouldn't read the story just by principle. Capital letters being in the proper place is important. It will annoy people when you don't do it.

If you don't do it in titles, you could lose the reader before you even start. If you fail to put it in your writing, you will quickly lose readers too. It's difficult to follow a writing that doesn't have proper capitalizations. This is how we learned to read, so every time we See a capital Letter in the Wrong spot, it affects our interpretation of the writing. If you read my writing above, someone would quickly get confused. They'd ask, "What's a 'Letter in the Wrong' spot? Are there types of spots? Am- am I a spot?

Don't make people think they are a spot, fix your capital letters. And... while you are at it....

I don't think there is much to be said here. You need to end your sentences with periods. You need to have commas in the right spaces. You've probably heard the "Punctuation saves lives! Herp Derp!" line enough times to make your ears bleed a little. "Let's eat grandma!" versus "Let's eat, grandma!". So, spare those poor cannibals that just wanted to devour their grandmas like a BigMac and need a freaking comma to prevent themselves from doing so a break, so they don't get confused. They'll probably still get confused by things like their own shadow, but at least it won't be your writing that leads to their apparent cannibalism.

And grandma... if your grandchildren are a single comma away from chomping down, get the hell out of there. It's a trap, grandma, run!

I remember struggling with the I's and Me's and when to use each for some time... when I was in third grade. Simply put, "I" works as the subject of a sentence. "Me" is an object. "Me" can be followed by a preposition, but it always must function as an object.

When you have two people. Joe and I, for example... the means of determining whether it is me or I is simple. You simply remove "Joe and". Naturally, the verbs should remain plural for two people instead of singular, but a sentence quickly becomes apparent whether it's a me or an I.

"He was looking at Joe and I". "He was looking at Joe and me."

"He was looking at I." *WRONG*

"He was looking at me." *RIGHT*

"He was looking at Joe and me." *DING DING*

With the expectation of its, most possessive words should have an apostrophe before the s. The same does not hold true for plural words. Putting an apostrophe in a word that is not followed by the thing it possesses can be annoying. Putting an apostrophe in a word that doesn't possess anything will lead to Grammar rage.

Girl is singular

Girls is plural

Girl's is possessive.

Girls' is possessive AND plural.

Sort of a homophone, but also worth its own entry, than and then are two words that have different meaning put seem to get flipped quite often. Then suggests a passage of time. Than compares two things. Flipping the pair of them will quickly lead to anger from certain readers.

It's a good idea to always check. You don't want to mix them up around certain people. They won't be happy about it.

Anyway, of the things that piss people off, I think these are the top ten "easily fixable" things. There are also things related to your stories, such as plots and plot holes. I think we always should mention wall-o-texts and not creating proper paragraphs. However, I think if most people saw someone writing everything without paragraphs, they would immediately just quit. It doesn't induce anger at you or your work, because most readers, even none Grammar Nazis, would see that and just go, "Nope".

The ten listed above, however, are things that can happen only once in your entire chapter. They can just as easily be a typo from speed writing and a failure for Grammarly to do its job properly than from the writer legitimately not understanding these rules.

I don't expect anyone who reads this to NOT know everything I just said. If you didn't know than and then were different, their and there were different, or that you should have proper punctuation and capital letters, I'm sorry to say this, but do you live under a box? Because I can't think of another way you could make it to high school without knowing these rules. However, just because you know these things are important might not click all the way. You might think something like, 'it's just a single mistake, no one but a Grammar Nazi would care."

These are important because they are the most common mistakes. Anyone with an interest in writing has had these rules slammed into them over and over again to the point where when they see violations to these rules they might react extremely negatively. Even I have put these rules in this very book at least 2-3 times.

The negativity, in general, is being applied to your work if you let these errors slip through. And remember, the only difference between a Grammar Nazi and the next guy may be the fact that the Grammar Nazi spoke. That means when you don't run into someone who is annoyed enough by your breach of grammar to say something, it could be 20 people, maybe 100 people who read your writing and say nothing. They silently let it change how they see your writing while you never know.

It might be nothing. They might get over it. Or... it might cause them to get a slightly worse opinion. Maybe they stop reading a chapter later, put your book down, and you never hear why. And the difference, the only difference, is that at the end of a chapter you were inattentive once and used their instead of they're. That's it, and you lose a reader, and maybe more readers.

Imagine my book right here. I've certainly failed to properly write their, they're, and there correctly at times. How has that altered my reader base? How many people have chosen not to read another chapter or ignore my advice in this book because I have grammar mistakes? Why even take advice from me about grammar when I myself make those mistakes? I can't tell you how many readers I've lost because I could have been grammatically better, and I'll never know.

So that's the point of avoiding triggers. You don't want to trigger your audience. Even if they can ignore the mistake. Even if they do ignore the mistakes, it will always chip away at the goodwill you've already earned. Somewhere, unspoken is a threshold of how much crap your reader can take. Some of it is aimed at your writing style. Some of it your story.

Ooo... I really liked this chapter! The line goes higher up, they continue to read.

Oh, he used their instead of there. It goes down, he's right on that border.

Well, this chapter was just boring. You know what, I'm going to look for something else. He drops past the threshold and gives up.

Did your mistake put him past the line? Maybe? Who knows? The point is, you want to maximize reader interest for as many readers as you can. These mistakes, however minor, will chip away at that, and for the most part, they're things that can easily be fixed.

So, fix them if you can, and with this list, fix them before you find them as a comment from a so-called Grammar Nazi. By then, it might already be too late.