As an amateur writer who runs a writer’s group and constantly seeks out critique, I’ve read innumerable amatuer manuscripts.
I remember reading one amateur script where each page had at least 5 spelling errors. It felt like being a job interviewer, and the interviewee turns up only in stained underwear, and spoke to me between mouthfuls of slowly slurped spaghetti. It didn’t matter how good they, or their story, were beneath the surface: all my goodwill towards them was wasted on the awful first impression.
With that framing device in place, the least useful level of critique, is… spelling. But why?
Because correcting spelling is a task so easy a computer can literally do it for you.
All the effort you put in to get real human eyes, attached to a real human heart, to read your work. You’re giving it to them to see if they get caught up in the swells and twists, if they laugh and cry reading like you did when you were writing it. That’s all wasted if they’re giving you notes like “torrent has two r’s”.
So you read this and say, alright, I’ll just ask people not to note any spelling mistakes, problem solved. That way people will still be engaged. Lemme shaw yu y that dun’t werk well. How annoyed ar yu write nao? Dough you feel appy with ow I’m X-pressing meself? Ow about afta reading 10 pages of dis?
If you submit something to someone to get their critique, or even first impressions of it, and it’s riddled with errors, it’s a waste of both your time and theirs. Yes, I’ll point out some spelling mistakes, but whilst I’m doing that I’m not engaged in the story, and that’s the point of critique, to have a reader’s thoughts and feelings on the page.
So, in short, leaving obvious spelling mistakes in whilst getting critique is a complete waste of time for both you and your reader.
Worse, it’s rude. The subtext being “I value your time so little, I couldn’t be bothered to run this through spell check before sending it out.”
With that impression, how do you think they’ll feel towards your characters, towards your work after that? How much effort do you think they’ll put into their feedback towards you? How receptive will they be when you need someone to read another piece of work, or a later draft?
Even worse, returning to our earlier metaphor, submitting something to an agent with a lot of spelling mistakes is like going to a job interview in a bath robe. Sure, maybe you can get dressed by yourself, maybe you can clean up great. The fact that you didn’t already, tells your interviewer all they need to know about you.
P.s
All that being said I’m not saying it has to be perfect though. After all, the 1st edition of Harry Potter had a shopping list that was “1 wand” too long, one “wicked” edition of the bible was printed saying thou “Shalt” commit adultery, and even Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid has a bunch of spelling mistakes, and that sold for a million dollars in 1968 (an eye-watering 7.5 million adjusted for inflation).
So, they get through, particularly the tricky ones that you need a sharp pair of eyes to catch, like homonyms, or the odd ‘your’ for ‘you’re’ that, once typed, becomes completely invisible to the eye of the writer. Credit to our group for having editing eyes that’d put a hawk to shame.
So if you have an extra could in a sentence, or a name isn’t capitalised once in a blue moon, that’s fine. So long as you’ve gone above and beyond to find and eliminate those mistakes.
The Fellowship Of Ink 