FOR THIS CHAPTER, WE ARE GOING TO BE DISCUSSING GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION! Two elements that are incredibly important to utilize and perfect.
I'm not going to lie, having perfect grammar and punctuation is difficult. I know for a fact that I don't, but I'm working on it every day. However, not everybody has gotten the message that proper grammar and punctuation can make or break a book.
There have been several books that I've read where the description will be perfect, the layout is cute, and the aesthetic is poppin', but then I'll read the first chapter and subconsciously cringe. The author's sentences will be choppy, have the wrong your or you're, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, and their punctuation... it's a hot mess.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about: "I can ' t hardly believe what you said , like , what the heck . Your supposed to blah blah blah ."
This isn't a Niall Horan or Louis Tomlinson tweet. (Don't take that comment seriously, I love them.) This is a sentence in a book that you are writing.
In that example, not only is the punctuation flat out wrong and spaced out, the sentence also contains a double negative. "I can't hardly believe what you said." Both "can't" and "hardly" are negative constructions. Negation is a grammatical construction that contradicts, or negates, all or part of the meaning of a sentence. This is also known as a negative construction.
