Second Manuscript Pass
When I first began teaching high school English, I realized that my grasp of grammar was not nearly as good as it ought to have been. I had a good instinctive understanding for grammar but didn't really understand the rules, and I was a terrible proofreaders. Today, over 16 years from the first moment I had to explain the present perfect tense to a room full of teenagers, I still struggle to get it right. I *know* what it looks like when it's used correctly, just like I know whether to use its or it's in this sentence... but I am not able to explain why, much of the time.
I've been thinking about this blind spot this weekend because I went through the second pass of my manuscript -- there's only one more chance to look at it before it goes to press. I trust my editor and copyeditor, but yet I can't help but worry that there will be some horrific, glaring grammatical error I didn't catch, or that I've failed to catch a typo that will sink the whole book.
These are the panic dreams of former high school English teachers, apparently!
I've been thinking about this blind spot this weekend because I went through the second pass of my manuscript -- there's only one more chance to look at it before it goes to press. I trust my editor and copyeditor, but yet I can't help but worry that there will be some horrific, glaring grammatical error I didn't catch, or that I've failed to catch a typo that will sink the whole book.
These are the panic dreams of former high school English teachers, apparently!
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