Proofreading

Your comment above has several punctuation errors. Do you see them?

If not, you might do well to get a professional editor to help you clean up your manuscript, but it's cheaper to learn to do it properly yourself.

Why not check some books out of the library, take a bit of time to really learn the rules well, then edit your manuscript again?

+1

I've been a professional copyeditor and proofreader for 27 years. However, every writer MUST know the ins and outs of proper punctuation and grammar. MUST.

Pepperman said:

Should you have your manuscript proof read by a pro before submission or or let an editor do it if a manuscript has been accepted?

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You must be able to edit your own work. You might have written this post quickly, so the errors could be from speed rather than lack of understanding. There are far more problems in this little snippet than just punctuation. If you submitted a manuscript with these kinds of errors in this frequency, it's unlikely an agent or editor would read more than a paragraph or two.

I notice different author punctuate differently. I thought I knew the proper use of commas, dashes semi-colons etc. I'm not so sure anymore

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The only real difference in authors' punctuation is usually in the way commas are used. Serial commas, for instance--some never use them, some always do, some do only when necessary. Rules for the rest are pretty straightforward. Too much variation? They're probably doing it wrong.

Shelley