Example this paragraph is written as one sentence without any punctuation it is easy for me to read because i know what the paragraph is about and i can easily insert the necessary punctuation commas periods inflections into the paragraph within my own thinkspace head etc it does not make the paragraph easy for anyone else to read because they do not know where the stops and starts are as you can see for yourself

This paragraph however, does include the base punctuation necessary to understand the context. If i were to leave out the proper commas, periods and inflections you would never know how to read what I’ve written. Commas, as you’ve learned throughout years of English classes, are used in most cases to indicate natural pauses. Periods obviously indicate ends of sentence. Grammar, as presented in this paragraph, makes the whole of the text much more readable.

Now when it comes to how strictly editors/publishers look at grammar during the writing process… it’s a mixed bag. Although it’s safe to say that all editors would love for their writer’s works to be properly grammatical, it’s understood that not all writers are editors. If they were, there would be no need for a fresh pair of eye, and therefor editors would be out of a job. We couldn’t have that now, could we! I know that personally, i have a hell of a time editing my own manuscripts. Because I’m so used to how the story reads in my head, i sometimes (quite often actually) misread passages that I’ve read, subconsciously inserting words that aren’t there. Or actually missing duplicate words that shouldn’t be there, such as the classic “the the” issue. I provide my editors with job security by not writing a perfect manuscript, and they provide me job security by fixing my mistakes and making it sound a hell of a lot better than i ever could.

what it really boils down to is this; Write your story as if you were speaking it. Write it with all the natural inflections that we put into our everyday speech. It’s a narrative (usually) so, narrate!

now, your question on the topic of “alright” vs. “all right” comes down to specific dialects and “slang terminology” which are two separate dialogues in and of themselves. It’s alright to say all right. And it’s all right to say alright. It’s like asking someone to explain the difference between “specialize” and “specialise”. There isn’t any difference in definition. Simply the dialect of English. Where American English has a strong usage of the letter Z, the chiefly British dialects of English do not; substituting an S in its stead.

I hope this goes somewhere towards answering your question.

CP