Good writing has to do with things like characters, plots, themes, dialogue, description, action, imagery, and so forth. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar are not criteria for evaluating an author's story, they are criteria for evaluating a publisher.

Do try to find and fix these petty flaws if it is feasible, but do not fret. How well one spells is only about one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent of what goes into making a good story. (Unless you're doing some sort experimental writing, or the spelling, grammar, and punctuation are so thoroughly goofed up that the reader can only speculate about the meaning of a sentence. As we sometimes see when English is not the author's native language.)

Spelling and punctuation are for copy editors to worry about, and should be a secondary concern to a writer compared to those other things. Grammar is trickier to prioritize, because it sometimes can be entangled with the writing itself, while most of the time, for most stories, it is in the realm of mere copy editing.

The criticism you shared with us isn't really about the quality of your writing at all, it seems. Those kinds of errors are just fodder for a copy editor to sort out. Its like saying "gee, not very good typing". In fact, typographical errors are also included in what a copy editor fixes. But who cares about spelling errors and such? They don't reflect one bit on how good the writing is! Many of the best writers of past and present were/are abysmal at spelling, punctuation, and etc. I recall there was a recent minor flap when it was discovered Jane Austen's punctuation was horrible, or most often it was just plain missing. There is now a controversy over the intended meaning of a few of her sentences, since she wasn't one who went in much for things like periods. She is still one of the best writers in the English language. Lousy copy editor, but great writer. I suggest to her critics that we do not need to worry about the intended meaning of those sentences since they were copy edited at the publisher's and Austen reviewed and approved the results. Publishers normally and routinely have a copy editor go through each and every manuscript. Even writers with the most impeccable copy-editing skills of their own end up with a few errors to be corrected: we're all of us merely human beings, after all.

That said, I do find it distracting when there are even a few copy-edit errors in a piece, and I get downright snobby about it but keep it to myself. Because my poo smells just as bad as anyone else's. And copy-edit problems are nothing worse than a small distraction from the story itself. People do advise that, when possible, have a decent copy editor go through a story before posting it. But the writing itself should always be judged independently of mere copy editing. Quality of copy editing is a reflection on the editor and/or publisher, not the author. Professional book reviews will sometimes have occasion to comment on such errors (or lack of errors) in ink-and-paper fiction, but it is analogous to commenting on the packaging of a product being reviewed and not the product itself.

Here on the Internet, authors most often do not have the luxury of copy editors, editors, or publishers. Or, technically, each author has to be all those things him or her self.

You can run spell check and even grammar check with your word processing program, but there is a lot of stuff they will miss. As well, there are a lot of times their 'corrections' are very incorrect. If a writer is an atrocious speller, as so many are, then spell check is probably a good idea. But only accept its suggested corrections when you're sure that it must be right. If you're not sure, or are puzzled about its suggestion, or it suggests something you don't even know the meaning of, reject its suggestion and try to check with a human friend who is good at such things.

IMHO, grammar check is always a bad idea, unless one is at least as knowledgeable about grammar as the creators of the grammar check program. Grammar check programs aren't really ready for prime time yet. For instance, I know that I frequently begin sentences with a conjunction and it is a big no-no that grammar check will point out. But - I don't care, because it is my own conscious stylistic choice. A better for instance is when grammar check wants to 'fix' the grammar in a character's dialogue. No! The character should speak like that character speaks, not like a dumb grammarbot.

Try to imagine Huckleberry Finn if all the grammar, punctuation, and spelling 'errors' had been 'fixed'? It would never have become one of the most loved, admired, and influential novels in America, I suppose.

Take heart, your critic only awarded demerits to the petty stuff, not to the stuff that makes writing either good or bad. Please continue to share your future stories with us?

Annemarie
"I think we understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have our names spelled wrong in the newspapers." -William Tecumseh Sherman

P.S. It would be good if I could volunteer as a copy editor, but for two things. One, I have disabilities that get in the way of being able to complete an assignment in anything remotely like a reasonable time period. Two, I am probably only a mediocre copy editor, anyway.