Coming in at an error rate of 127 in my draft, next up for discussion is Style. To be fair the book is over 79000 words so it’s not like I have that many errors in comparison to say, 30000 words. Most of my errors are typo’s or me just getting ahead of my rapid fingers when writing. I tend to get the story down with the intention of going back and fixing things later. If I focus on writing perfectly as I write, I get frustrated or lose my thought.
Contextual Spelling: 349
Grammer: 212
Punctuation: 999+ (Um that’s embarrassing)
Sentence Structure: 19
Style: 127
Vocabulary Enhancement: 267
Within STYLE are the following issues I found in my story:
1. Unclear Antecedent
2. Capitalization at the start of a sentence
3. Incorrect Spacing
4. Incorrect Spacing with punctuation
5. Incorrect verb form
6. Inflated Phrase
7. Wordiness
8. Nominalization
An unclear antecedent in writing is a word that refers to a clause, phrase, sentence or another word.
In my case, it’s the referral of him, he, his, her, hers etc.
With Grammarly, it provides a box to the right with the ‘issue’ often with a suggestion on how to correct the error. Once the error is corrected this box will disappear. At the bottom there are two options, ignore (Because sometimes what I’ve written is what I want despite the ‘error’)
In case I need more information there is a handy ‘more’ tab that will explain what the problem is. It’s also good to have some examples if you’re not sure.
Now for some examples of my writing that needed some TLC in the style department.
Just ignore the fact that the next example is just horrible all around. This one has three unclear antecedent’s. They and they’re. In context, it is clear who I’m referring to, but I would make it more clear and fix this entirely since it sucks.
“I don’t need the second one. The company isn’t locking the system because they want me to snoop, and now they’re on the way.”
by replacing the first ‘they’ it became clear who I was referring to.
This was going to be hilarious. The pigeon pecked the man’s hand hard and he
By changing ‘his’ to ‘the man’s’ it gave a better referral to whose hand it is. In that example, I cant use a name since he is a stranger being observed from afar. His name will come up later.
The following is out of context. In this conversation, they are explicitly talking about the main character’s sister.

I actually ignored this since I don’t need to change it. This is why it’s important to think about what changes are being suggested and why there is an ‘ignore’ option to the Grammarly check.
If I were going to change it, this one is simple.
“No, I do not. I’m sorry, but this is hard. Close or not Anne was my sister.”
It’s truly amazing how changing one word can have such impact! Its’ true.
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You know, I’ve gone back to start a line by line rewrite of BiaAtlas and there are so many errors. The things we learn along the way, it’s amazing.
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I agree. Your blog has been a renaissance for me. I’ve learned so much! And it’s all SO important.
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Thank you.
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You are welcome, indeed It’s more a thank you because I’ve learned so much, and I feel my writing is better for it.
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That’s why I’m doing this blog. It’s a long road and it’s been bumpy, still is… I’m glad to have been some help.
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Smooch on the cheek, Sheryl. Your blog is far more valuable than you realize, to many!
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