<p>How important is grammar and punctuation? </p>
<p>I'm not exactly talking about a piece where there are tons and tons of grammar mistakes and punctuation errors. Maybe a few.</p>
<p>Could that be a major turn off?</p>
<p>As a reader, are the admission officers constantly looking for grammar mistakes?</p>
<p>As a reader, it’s really distracting to read pieces with grammatical mistakes. It also shows that the writer is careless when it comes to editing. They aren’t LOOKING for grammatical mistakes, but it’s glaringly obvious when they appear.</p>
<p>They’re not looking for them or going out of their way to find things to penalize you for. They take the essay as a whole. However, speaking as someone who has read a LOT of essays over the past year, grammatical mistakes are really off-putting. Tons and tons is obviously problematic, but “a few” can definitely hurt you. I panicked when I realized I had typo’ed “synagogue” in one of my supplements. In retrospect, that was an overreaction, but multiple errors are noticeable. </p>
<p>If you want to send your essay over at any point, I’d be happy to proofread it for you.</p>
<p>A small error is one thing- missing a comma or a typo. But, I agree that more than one or two is a flag.
What also doesn’t look good is misusing words, choosing elaborate words when simple ones will do, or careless mistakes you don’t realize are wrong- “there’s” when you mean “there are” or “she gave it to him and I” when correct is “to him and me.” Or, “Me and Sally…” You want to seem properly able to self-edit. I also read for a college.</p>