A Crazy, OCD Guide to Writing with Zero Grammatical Mistakes
A surprising guide to mistake-free writing (without memorizing grammar textbooks) by a non-native speaker.
I recently read an article on the New York Times titled “How to Solve the New York Times Crossword” by Deb Amlen. Not that I’m a crossword solver — in fact, the reason I checked out this instructional article was that I accidentally discovered that I’d been unknowingly paying for the annual subscription to the NYT Crossword. You know, with all the digital subscriptions available these days, I’m sure we’ve all been there.
Anyway, I thought I’d at least attempt a crossword before my subscription expires. I don’t know if you’ve ever done these crosswords, but, damn, are they a head-scratcher. It’s the clues, not so much the vocabulary, that are evasive. Hence the how-to guide to the crossword.
One thing that resonated with me in Ms. Amlen’s article came from the section on cracking the harder clues. “Question everything,” she says. Then it struck me how much solving the crossword has in common with writing in a second language. As a non-native speaker, I can’t help but question everything I write. Is the word I’m using out of context? Am I spelling it wrong? Is my grammar correct? Should I use the preposition “to” instead of “of”? And, most importantly, can anyone understand my writing?
I can already feel anxiety spiraling as I’m writing these questions that are only 1% hypothetical and 99% real and terrifying — no wonder why I often find myself preferring to run five miles rather than writing five sentences.
Still, the spirit of questioning everything can be as much of a hindrance as it is a boon. While doubting every word we write is not the encouragement we need to outlive writer’s block, it certainly teaches us something about writing with precision.
The Road to No Mistakes
It is not in our human nature to make no mistakes, but it is in us to question ourselves. Indeed, I would argue that critical thinking, the ability to doubt our ideas and interpretation and to learn from mistaken assumptions, is the ultimate purpose of education. Therefore, the only way to solecism-free writing is making doubt a natural part of your editing process.
Note that I said to doubt when you are editing, not when you are writing the first draft — I believe in letting intuition freely do its thing as much as the next creative writer. If doubt is introduced at the beginning of the writing process, I doubt there would be anything written at all.
When you are a non-native writer, it is especially important to turn your error-detecting radar to its maximum capacity when you are editing. A lack of awareness of mistaken assumptions about language usage is one of the most inhibitive mistakes I’ve seen in the non-native writers I’ve worked with.
Your ability to question your work, or editor’s doubt as I’d like to call it, is your car’s speedometer that keeps you from going beyond the speed limit. Like the speedometer, the editor’s doubt should always be at the forefront of your editor’s mind, regardless of how much you’ve written or how much grammar you think you’ve learned.
If you suspect you’ve made a mistake and you cannot resolve the suspicion yourself, now is the time to unleash the ultimate Grammar Police — Google.
To demonstrate a few Google techniques that I use to check my grammar, here’s how I approached the previous two paragraphs when I was editing.
Technique 1: search for grammar guides
The rudimentary method of using Google to check grammar is searching for instructional articles that directly explain the usage of certain grammar issues.
Example: Re: “or editor’s doubt as I’d like to call it.”
You may have noticed that this sentence fragment contains two inserted remarks: I inserted “editor’s doubt” following the subject of the sentence, “your ability to question your work,” and I added “as I’d like to call it” to explain where the phrase “editor’s doubt” came from.
Now, where should I place the comma? Before, after, or before and after the phrase “editor’s doubt”? Solution: I Googled “comma use for inserts” and found an article on inserts. The examples given in the article taught me that, theoretically, it is necessary to apply commas both before and after “editor’s doubt” since both “editor’s doubt” and “as I’d like to call it” are inserts. However, to prevent commas from cluttering the sentence, I made the aesthetic judgment of dropping the comma after “editor’s doubt,” since the word “as” already marks an insertion.
The beauty of this technique is that it teaches you something new. For example, the reason I know that added remarks are called inserts is one of the grammar guides I found on Google in the past.
Technique 2: related keyword search
This is a more advanced trick I like to use when I’m not sure whether a certain word or expression accurately says what I want it to say. I come up with a few guesses and quickly Google each of them to check whether the results that come up capture what I intend to communicate.
Example: Re: “your car’s speedometer.”
Now, the reason I’m not sure whether “speedometer” is the word commonly used to indicate the thing in front of the steering wheel that monitors a vehicle’s speed is that I don’t have a car, nor am I visually qualified to drive. While my parents had a car when I was growing up, they referred to the speedometer in my native language, Mandarin, which allows speakers great flexibility in making up compound words that my parents gladly exploited.
Solution: I Googled a few guesses: “car speed monitor,” “car speed meter,” “thing that checks car speed.” I got a few irrelevant results about GPS trackers when the search included “monitor,” mostly from Amazon sellers, but soon enough a Wikipedia article titled “speedometer” popped up, with a picture of the exact object I had in mind.
Technique 3: quotation marks
This is my absolute favorite trick that I use on any expression I’m not sure about. It can be used to check prepositions, idioms, article usage (a/an/the), wordings, and many more. Simply Google the expression you have in mind in quotation marks and see what results show up. If the results you get are scant and come from illegitimate sources (i.e. sites you’ve never heard of), try another guess, again in quotation marks. If there is a more common way of expressing what you just searched, Google may even provide a hint by asking you “did you mean…”
Example: Re: “at the forefront of your editor’s mind.”
I wasn’t sure which preposition to use in this phrase, “at” or “in,” so I Googled “at the forefront of the mind” and then “in the forefront of the mind.” The first search showed 2,850 results while the second only had 787.
Example 2: Re: “Grammar Police.”
The phrase I initially had in mind was “Grammar Guard” because I liked the harsh quality of the near-alliteration as well as the bulky, powerful feeling of the open vowel in “guard.” However, something about “Grammar Guard” just sounded wrong in my head–perhaps the excessive “g” sounds were too intractable. I Googled “Grammar Guard” in quotation marks and found an article that includes the phrase “punctuation police and grammar guard.” The author was clearly allured by the double alliteration. None of the other search results seemed legitimate, although I did find a Facebook profile of a person named Grammar Guard. In the end, I settled for the more common phrase “Grammar Police.”
Technique 4: A or B
If you feel ambivalent between two expressions, such as “at the forefront” vs “in the forefront,” why not ask Google directly? Simply search: at the forefront or in the forefront. It is no surprise that the first result is titled “be at/in/to the forefront (of something).” This technique is especially useful for prepositional phrases.
Technique 5: dictionary & thesaurus
Seriously, don’t make me explain this one. But, if you have trouble finding sample sentences that include a certain word, try searching “X (the word) in a sentence.”
Final words
Of course, there are many more creative ways to employ Google as your copy editor yet to be discovered. Finding these editing tricks has been some of the greatest delights in my journey as a second-language writer. My only regret is that I have not had a mentor who is a non-native writer whom I could ask, nor have I had the chance to share these tips with others like me. Until now.
How many times you should second-guess your grammar
Well, the answer to this question depends on how knowledgeable you are about grammar and style, how confident you generally are, and how formal your writing needs to be. In my case, I consider myself relatively well-versed in grammar, but when I was in college, I checked my grammar using the techniques above as many times as I doubted my writing, about five times per page (250 words). I don’t suppose I was a very confident person?
Nowadays, I check when I want to. I mean it. Somehow, when there is no longer a deadline on my writing that determines my grade, finding a better expression for what I want to say no longer feels like a chore. Checking and double-checking my style and word choice is now an ingrained habit of who I am as a writer.
However, while the idea of perfect writing is a great ego booster, I still want to put out a word of caution: no writing is meant to be perfect. I’ve tried hard enough to know that perfect writing is impossible and, in a way, dead and deadly boring.
The tips in this article may help you polish an important writing assignment for school or for work, but there are times when you should let some grammatical uncertainties slide. Don’t become so obsessed with perfect grammar that you no longer have the time to write the things that need to be written. At the end of the day, grammar is far less important than meaning and wit.
If you’re wondering why I write in my second language in the first place, here’s an answer: “Why I Write Creatively in My Second Language.”
