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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40746
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40746
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

No one will reject your manuscript because of one or two typos. But, yes, it needs to be in correct English (or whatever language you're using) with very few mistakes. This applies to your cover letters and other documents too.

If you can't afford a professional editor, try to find one who will barter with you. Maybe you have a skill that person needs.

If you can't get a professional, find at least one _native speaker_ of English to read it for you. If they use paper, hand them a red pen and insist that they circle everything that is wrong (and fix what they can). Do something similar for computer editing (for example, changing the font to red). Avoid people who are super nice, to the point that they won't tell you if you made a mistake. And make sure it's someone who writes well in English and understands grammar.

You'll use a spellchecker of course but an awful lot of wrong words are spelled correctly. You need a native eye to catch most of those.

When I've read articles about submitting manuscripts, the number one thing most of them talk about is to fix all your mistakes. Something littered with errors is not going to look good. It is likely the reader won't even get past the first chapter.

As a note, your question has one outright grammatical error (huge one) and at least two other spots where the language is technically correct but a bit off from how a native speaker would phrase it. I'm not going to avoid answering your question because of those errors, but I wouldn't read a whole novel like that (even a draft), unless my job was to fix it.

I'm a native speaker of English and, when I submit my own novel, I'm going to have several people read it to catch typos and other mistakes. It's hard to edit your own work, even if your language skills are good enough to edit other people's (which I have done).

Original score: 3