B ProfeshNul, Ya?

"Wat do you tink? Is dis ok for dat article U want?"

Does that look like a great way to start an email? Do you honestly think it’s going to impress an editor when you use leetspeak or chat shorthand or just plain bad English?

If you were interviewing for a job as a regional manager or vice president of a large corporation, would you show up in an oil-stained t-shirt, shorts, and scruffy tennis shoes?

A query letter is the equivalent of a job interview. For a professional writer submitting a query letter, manuscript, and so on, the equivalent appropriate dress includes proper English (or other language of choice) – that is, correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

No, it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect and a couple of mistakes won’t make a difference to most editors, but using chat shorthand, leet speak, or sending out communications riddled with errors will only make the editor think that anything you submit for publication will be similarly riddled with errors.

There are writers who argue that when they submit articles or other manuscripts, that those are clean copies. Thing is, if you practice bad English in your chat, your emails, your blogs, your forum posts, your letters and other writings, you’re reinforcing that bad English. Then, later, when you want to write good English, those bad habits will come through. Not necessarily consciously, but they will.

If you want to be a professional writer, then using proper English all the time will help to reinforce good habits that will pay off in better quality manuscripts.

But at the very least, use proper English in ALL your communications with editors, agents, and publishers. Including email.

Given a choice, an editor will work with a writer whose copy is clean and as free of errors as possible. Clean copy requires less time to edit, it’s less of a hassle, and frees the editor to do one of the other several hundred things on his or her list. And making the editor happy means a greatly increased chance of getting an assignment or repeat assignments.

And please, when you send anything in, re-read it. Don’t depend on your word processing program’s spell checker, or you might find yourself with some correctly-spelled but still embarrassing errors. "I am competent at filling." (As seen on a resume.) Is that pumpkin or apple you’re talking about there? No? Cherry? How does one become competent at filling, anyway?