Most books aren't rejected because stories are "bad." They're rejected because they're not "ready to read." In short, minor stuff like typos, grammar, spelling, etc.

I don't mean places where we, as authors, deliberately break rules. Those are fine. That's part of our job. Language always changes with use, and we can help it on its way. No, I'm referring to places where someone just plain didn't learn rule or got confused or overlooked it during self-edits.

I've been editing novels for over three years. Looking back at my experiences, I feel like sharing most common mistakes I've seen. If you'll go through your manuscript and fix these before you submit it to a publisher, your odds of publication will increase dramatically.

Once you've found a publisher who publishes what you write, you want to present yourself in best way possible. Submitting an unedited manuscript is a bit like going to a job interview wearing a purple Mohawk, no shoes, torn jeans, and a dirty T-shirt. Your resume may be perfect, and your qualifications impeccable, but something tells me you won't get job.

The publisher is investing a lot in every book it accepts. E-publishers tend to invest loads of time, and print publishers tend to invest an advertising budget and cost of carrying a large inventory. Why ask them to invest hours and days of editing time as well? If publisher gets two or three or ten nearly identical books, you want yours to be one requiring least editing.

The first thing you need to do, and I hope you've already done it, is use spelling and grammar checkers in your word processor. This will catch many of "common mistakes" on my list. But I've been asked to edit many books where author obviously didn't do this, and I confess that I may well have been lazy and let a couple of mine get to my editors unchecked. Bad Michael!

There are some other valuable lists at following websites:

Common Errors in English http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors

Words That Are Often Confused http://lbarker.orcon.net.nz/words.html

Here's a list of mistakes I see most often.

* Dialogue where everyone speaks in perfect English and never violates any of bullet points below. Okay, I made that up. That's not really a common problem at all. But I have seen it, and it's a terrible thing.

* It's is a contraction for "it is" and its is possessive.

* Who's is a contraction for "who is" and whose is possessive.

* You're is a contraction for "you are" and your is possessive.

* They're is a contraction for "they are," there is a place, their is possessive.

* There's is a contraction for "there is" and theirs is possessive.

* If you've been paying attention to above examples, you've noticed that possessive pronouns never use apostrophes. Its, whose, your, yours, their, theirs...

* Let's is a contraction for "let us."

* When making a word plural by adding an s, don't use an apostrophe. (The cats are asleep.)

* When making a word possessive by adding an s, use an apostrophe. (The cat's bowl is empty.)

* A bath is a noun, what you take. Bathe is a verb, action you do when taking or giving a bath.

* A breath is a noun, what you take. Breathe is a verb, action you do when taking a breath.

* You wear clothes. When you put them on, you clothe yourself. They are made of cloth.

* Whenever you read a sentence with word "that," ask yourself if you can delete that word and still achieve clarity. If so, kill it. The same can be said of all sentences. If you can delete a word without changing meaning or sacrificing clarity, do it. "And then" is a phrase worth using your word processor's search feature to look for.

* Keep an eye on verb tenses. "He pulled pin and throws grenade" is not a good sentence.

* Keep an eye on making everything agree regarding singular and plural. "My cat and my wife is sleeping," "My cat sleep on sofa," and "My wife is a beautiful women" are not good sentences. (I exaggerate in these examples, but you know what I mean.)

According to one of my previous articles, whenever a Southerner says "Y'all watch this," get out of way because those are probably last words he will ever say.

Well, I am a Southerner. I used to live in southern US, but I moved to south China. And, I'm about to say magic words:

Y'all watch this.

The word is "week." If I want to talk about more than one week, like I did near end of previous article, I'll use weeks. No apostrophe. If I want to talk about something belonging to a week, such as "last week's newsletter," I'll use an apostrophe.

That's rule. If it's a noun, s makes it plural and apostrophe-s makes it possessive. It's just that simple.

If I were still in US, and I wanted one of those fancy carved signs that are so common on southern lawns, it would not read "The LaRocca's." The LaRocca's what? His lawn? His sign? That apostrophe makes it singular possessive, so The LaRocca is surely claiming ownership of something. If that was not his intent, and he whacked in an apostrophe anyway, he's an idiot.

What about plural possessive? Is it "the LaRoccas' house" or "the LaRoccas's house?" Well, it's neither, since my wife isn't a LaRocca and we don't own a house. But for sake of this article, pretend she is and we do.