(no subject)

[alyse]

Okay, I promised I wasn't going to bitch or whine in here about the archives for at least two months and I'm trying to be good. So instead of whining about things, let me just say that after a series of... ahem... colourful mails from an author concerning rejection letters and the contents thereof, I have some comments, observations and questions.

One of the things Leah and I find with the archive is that a lot of authors really struggle with punctuation, particularly the punctuation of speech and the failure to use full stops, leading to run on sentences. In fact, we found that these sorts of errors were so common that we sat down and wrote the 'Minimal Quality Guidelines' for Wraithbait, which set out the kinds of things we reject for so that authors could be forewarned.

It's still happening, and after it happened again last night, with associated... colourful e-mails, I started to wonder whether a) it was me, b) it was them or c) it was the state of teaching these days.

So in order to make sure it wasn't me, I asked around the office to double check my understanding of the correct way to punctuate speech (because I tend to doubt myself a lot :)) and not one of the six people I asked, all professionals and educated to near or graduate level, picked the answer I thought was right.

It made me doubt myself so much that it wasn't until another colleague pulled a novel out that she was reading at lunchtime to confirm that, yes, I was right, that I started to relax.

But it made me think rather hard about the whole 'grammar' thing and just how important readers of fanfiction find it. I know how important I think it is - very - but am I just weird and grammar obsessed? Also, while I think that grammar is important in the finished, 'published' work, I don't think that it's the only tool in the writer's box, and probably not the best tool for the job of actually writing a story. That takes that 'spark' of creativity, and in writing fanfiction it also takes a good eye for the characters and a good ear for their dialogue and the way they interact with each other, and the ability to reproduce that in a story.

I do think, however, that any writer who hasn't got a grasp of the technical aspects should get a beta reader who has that grasp to look at the story before posting. After all, while grammar can be learnt and it's more difficult to learn the other aspects of writing such as plotting, pacing and characterisation, errors in grammar are the easiest things for a competent beta reader to spot, point out and convince an author to change before posting.

At least that's my take on it :)

So I thought I'd conduct a poll to see what other people thought.

The poll is open to everyone, and I'm going to make this post public so anyone can take it. I am, however, going to keep the results private to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't want people's responses to be influenced by what the majority answers are at any point in time, and secondly, I do know that not everyone has the same grasp of grammar, nor should they (see my point about beta readers above) and I don't think it's fair to make all those answers public.

In other words, I'm looking for honesty.

I'll leave it open a couple of weeks, and then I'll anonymise and summarise the results.

And it's guaranteed that this post will contain multiple spelling, punctuation and grammar errors :) Posts like this always do. Can I blame it on the fact that I'm bloody freezing and my fingers are like icicles?

Brrrrrr.



[ETA: The reason that I'm asking for whether your first language is English, American English etc is that it has been claimed that punctuation of speech differs - in fact, one of the 'colourful' e-mails was about how unfair it was to impose American English grammar rules on an English author. Sucked, then, that she had the story read and commented on by someone who's English. As opposed to the other non-US admin ::g:: So while I'm pretty damned sure that American grammar rules don't differ from English, Australian or Canadian on this point, I'm trying to confirm that :)]

[Poll #658517]

Comments

[cedara]

UK/US grammar rules for speech differ from German ones by just a smidge, btw.

[alyse]

Yeah, I'd gathered that from things I'd seen submitted elsewhere. Apart from anything else, I think German has the speech marks that open at the bottom and then close at the top, is that right?

Like:

,It's raining.'

(I don't have a non-English keyboard so can't reproduce them very well :))

I do remember reading that after Chinese, English is one of the most difficult languages to learn because there are so many exceptions to the rules and because the rules are so confusing.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

There are also differences in punctuating speech between US and UK usage (as I remember every time I end up doing stuff for zines and things get tinkered with so there's internal consistency through the zine) but for the life of me I can't think exactly what right now... helpful, eh? ;)

[alyse]

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to iron out - whether speech is punctuated differently.

I'm sure it's not, because I have a number of American novels on my shelf, i.e. the US paperback version rather than UK.

I do know from discussions with destina and Leah that Americans and Brits use em-dashes differently. If you're a Brit, you use spaces too.

So a Brit would write something like:

It was - to pardon the pun - grammariffic.

Whereas they've told me that Americans would write it something like this:

It was--to pardon the pun--grammariffic.

I know Des was ranting about why people insisted on putting spaces in the thing once (to which I nervously cleared my throat and pointed out it was probably a Brit thing ::g::) but I have to say that the latter one looks totally, totally weird to me ::g::

[roo2.livejournal.com]

I admit that punctuation and grammar are probably my weakest spots when it comes to writing. In one of those ironic whatchamacallits, I was much too busy sitting in the back of the room in English and trying to surreptitiously read genre novels to pay much attention to boring stuff like punctuation and grammar. I sucked at diagramming sentences, although I did rule when it came to spelling :-) It has, however, come back to bite me in the ass. I have serious problems with commas (comes from that old adage of using them when you think there should be a pause, which isn't always correct) and I've been known to let things dangle that shouldn't ought to be dangly. And sentence fragments.

Despite all of this, I do have a copy of the Holt Handbook and other writing guides that I consult, at least when I can find them. I use beta readers and tell them to be merciless, especially on the technical problems so that I can learn to improve my work. I do make an effort, although it can be confusing and difficult, and I do believe I'm improving, if only incrementally.

The reason I'm babbling on is that while I'm not an expert, I still get annoyed by bad grammar and punctuation. Yes, it does get to the point where I'll stop reading a story. Obviously I let some writers and stories slide if the problems are minimal and the story is good, but I figure that if I can spot the problems then the writer needs some help. It seems like many writers (especially the younger ones) are even worse than I, or perhaps they just don't care. I cringe when I see "ill" instead of "I'll", or "would of" instead of "would've". There are even some who don't seem to grasp the basic idea that some form of punctuation is needed at the end of a sentence!

While I'm probably guilty of some level of badness in the technical side of writing, I have to say that I truly appreciate archives that screen for these sorts of problems. I believe this helps everyone. It helps writers improve their work and therefore provides readers with more quality writing to read, at least in theory. I really wish more archives would screen for basic literacy on the part of their writers - on many occasions I've given up on archives entirely because it seems like everything I try to read is so badly written that it makes me grit my teeth and start growling and wondering what the heck is wrong with education today.

So, a thank you from a reader who does appreciate the screening. If I were to write in the SG:A fandom (I'm considering it), I would probably submit my work to you folks. If it was rejected, I'd actually be happy that someone showed me where I screwed up and work with a good beta to fix it and try to avoid making the same mistake(s) in the future.

[alyse]

Thank you :)

I do understand that not everyone has the same level of technical skill, but it's about knowing where your weaknesses are and taking those into account I think. For example, I waffle endlessly so have to prune my fics and watch out for those pesky run on sentences :)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I'd like to link this at metafandom. Normally I wouldn't ask to link a public post, but I know you have had issues in the past about linkage, so I wanted to give you the chance to object.

[alyse]

I only have an issue in linking to public posts if it's likely to lead to a shitstorm :)

[eretria.livejournal.com]

Just for the record: while my native language isn't English, I still don't consider your grammar rules weird. Then again, I do remember grammar lessons at school, but mostly - in my case - grammar is applied instinctively much rather than consciously (and surprisingly enough, it's correct in pretty much 90 % of all cases), which is something I'm currently remedying in teaching English grammar to a 10th-grade pupil. That way, I'm refreshing the grammar rules for myself, too, which is a definite bonus.
Wait. I did have a point there, somewhere. *looks around*

[alyse]

I'm like you - I don't actually remember being taught the rules of grammar, but I presume I must have been at some point because I use them instinctually. So they must have been beaten into me as a small child :)

And I think English rules are totally weird ::g:: I was reading up on them again today and I'm not surprised that so many people struggle with the punctuation of speech since speech is punctuated differently, in English, to partial quotations.

[cetpar.livejournal.com]

I have to caveat my answer to #2. If the errors are occasional or mild, and the premise of the story is good, I'll continue reading. If the mistakes are too atrocious, I will stop reading. I've found my tolerance for bad grammar (and bad characterization for that matter) is lower not that I have found more authors writing SGA who have well-written and intriguing stories. (And these are mainly on LJ. I wonder why that is?)

[thespianpythia.livejournal.com]

I'd like to add the caveat that although technically my first "language" is American English, I usually adhere to British grammatical, punctuation and spelling conventions, since I went to school here. Not that my schoolteachers taught me any English grammar directly, mind you. My parents are both Correct Usage Nazis about writing, and most of that stuck with me. Learning Latin (and/or Greek) also helps a lot, since you get a better idea of the parts of speech and correct sentence structure, though obviously it has little to no impact on one's punctuation.

[thecomfychair.livejournal.com]

It's definitely not just you.

er, I misclicked the radio button for number 1, thanks to my newfangled laptop touchpad. Just scoot my "vote" on down to the answer below it.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

I was taught grammar in junior school. We learnt dictation (which is a very, very fast way to learn to punctuate correctly) in junior school. The wrong grammar is a very fast way to throw people out of a story, along with spelling errors. Do these bad spellers/grammarists not notice that every professionally solicited article, from magazine articles to newspapers to books has decent grammar and spelling, not to mention punctuation? Just because it's amateur work, surely it can't apply to them. Nooooo.

My intolerance has only gone up since I got a job as a proofreader. Who says fandom can't get you anywhere?

[ancientsavvy.livejournal.com]

I love your icon!

I know the feeling

[ancientsavvy.livejournal.com]

I completely relate to your pain. We have the same issue at West Wing Fan Fiction Central. Though it seems like it isn't too bad an issue in that fandom. Seems like its either great, or it sucks really badly. Its usually the bad spelling that real gets my goat though. Since we actually format each story individually, I'm not going to waste my time on one that they couldn't run a 5 second spell-check on. Ggrrrr

[evilmaniclaugh.livejournal.com]

Like you I started to think I was wrong. It was after I'd beta'd three people's stories in a row (English and American) and they all put this ... "It's raining." He said.

I'm no good at grammar and most of what I've learnt has come from using two or three excellent beta readers but what's going on?

[temaris.livejournal.com]

I have been told by two separate people that they were taught in school that "It's raining." He said was grammatically correct. I was incredulous the first time, and despite subsequent (and unrelated) corroboration continue to hope that they were slandering their teachers and misremembering their lessons.

On reflection, I wonder if the problem is not that it is wrong per se, but that at junior or high school level English no one has explained to the pupils *when* it is wrong -- and when it is right.

A poor user of grammar and punctuation

[rangerfan1994.livejournal.com]

I'll admit it LOL
I suck at it, I just don't get it I guess. It's probably the main reason I hardly ever write. I have a lot of story ideas running around in my head, but I'm just afraid to write because I know my grammar and punctuation just well, SUCK LOL.

I've wanted to get a beta reader, but have to wonder if they would put up with my really really bad grammar??

As for the poll, bad grammar and punctuation don't really bother me. Maybe because I don't understand it enough to see it?

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

Seriously? It'll throw me, but if the story is good enough and the mistakes aren't glaringly obvious enough to bug the ever-loving crap out of me, then I can ignore it. I'm willing to gives passes for stylistic grammar if it's intrinsic to the flow of the story. (Although, seriously, including a comma there doesn't mean you're selling out your artistic integrity.)

What bugs me are the authors who just blatantly don't care. Honey, if you can't be bothered to go through and put capital letters in, then I can't be bothered to read it. In fact, the only thing I will be bothered to do is mock you mercilessly with friends.

There are times I feel like keeping some spare apostrophes and capital letters and then handing them out to the authors who have obviously left theirs on the bus somewhere.

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, bad formatting will do me in ahead of bad grammar. Bad grammar I can endure if a story is otherwise intriguing me, but bad formatting makes me too tired to read on. It's surprising how much of a difference little things like no blank lines between paragraphs makes.

I ticked the button saying I was taught grammar in school, but that's not entirely true. My English teachers were all trendy types who didn't want to restrict our thought processes with rules, and concentrated instead on the literature side of the courses. This left me with primary school "this is a noun" levels of English grammar and an abiding hatred of classical novels. Fortunately, my Latin teachers realised that they had to teach us some elements of English grammar before Latin grammar would make sense.

[reedfem.livejournal.com]

You know, right after I filled out your poll, I opened up a story and was immediately smacked in the face with terrible, awful, no good, very bad grammar/spelling/punctuation errors galore.

I believe I said such things would probably not deter me, but I found myself starting to skim the story, going faster and faster with each subsequent problem until I realized I was practically revving the mouse wheel and praying it was almost over so I could stop.

So. Can I change my answers? *g*

[xochiquetzl]

Yep. Click the "poll number" link and change your answers.

[mmmchelle.livejournal.com]

Trying to write a story without a basic handle on grammar is like trying to compose music without knowing scales. It can't be done well. Words are a writer's tools, and anyone who shares their writing should know how to use them correctly, IMO.

Do people make mistakes? Sure. I've sent out a story only to find a typo, or a misspelled name, or out of place commas. But the story should show some attempt to find out how written language works. Particularly since there are any number of books and websites where the information can be found. When no effort is made, I assume the author doesn't care enough about the story or her audience to take the time to communicate it well, and I stop reading.

[wychwood]

There really are some differences in punctuation between British and American English; there's part of an article at Wikipedia about it.

I said I learnt grammar at school, but it wasn't in English classes - we were taught most of it by the Latin teacher, along with some for German...

[xochiquetzl]

I took Latin, too. It really did help a lot.

[xochiquetzl]

<American>I learned grammar at school, and the lessons stuck with me.</American>

;)

But seriously. I was lucky. In junior high I had the little old lady who opened her class with, "They don't want me to have you diagram sentences. They say it's old fashioned, and not the modern way to learn grammar. Well, I think it's a good way to learn, so we're doing it anyway."

[anoneknewmoose.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom.

Just to clarify my answers:

1. I learned grammar in school, though I never did understand gerunds, but I didn't really care about it until I started reading fanfiction. I then realized most teenage fic writers have no grasp of grammar, especially on ff.net, and the eyetwitching started.

2. Generally I'll only stop reading a fic if the grammar rules are persistent and/or blatantly obvious...but I am quick to hit back if in the first few paragraphs I count one or two a sentence.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

There are indeed differences between American and British standard usage; for a decent summary of some of those differences, you might try the introduction to the American edition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, in which the author explains why she didn't change to American usage for the American market.

Unfortunately, these differences are not entirely clear-cut, because grammar rules change. For example, the Oxford comma (better known in the US as the serial comma - the second comma in this series: "eats, shoots, and leaves") is so named because it used to be the absolute rule at the Oxford University Press. At that time, US students were taught that the serial comma was never correct. Now, though, US usage has moved toward the use of the serial comma; British usage, meanwhile, has veered away from it.

The sentence you chose as an example in the first question is unambiguous, to the best of my editorial knowledge; the correct answer is, I believe, the same in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But it is true that British standard usage is more relaxed about punctuation around quotation marks than American usage. Many Americans are taught that punctuation outside quotation marks is always wrong, and that isn't true - semicolons and question marks may belong outside the quotes in US usage. But in the UK, even commas and periods may occasionally be correctly placed outside the quotation marks. (These occasions aren't going to be all that common in Wraithbait stories, though.)

And in reference to question two - I'm an editor. (As if you couldn't tell from my fascinating discourse on a topic no one cares about but editors.) I can overlook a few errors in a story; I'm used to finding them even in published work. (No one catches everything. Sad but true.) If I'm jerked into editor mode too many times, though, reading the story becomes work, and I hit that back button. So my answer actually falls somewhere between the first and the second choice.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

I work at a writing center on my college campus, and almost every appointment I have, I teach someone the proper use of a comma, semi-colon, etc. And that's only for acedmic papers.

My favorite thing in fandom is when it was pointed out someone I would consider a very proflic, popular fic writer that her/his grammar was inncorect, s/he went on a rant about how it was her/his style, not grammar. Among other things, dialog was definitely puncuation: "It's raining." He said.

[shealynn88.livejournal.com]

I couldn't answer about the decline of grammer due to being new to LJ fanfic. I will say that, in general (minus my INSANE use of commas), my grammar tends to be fairly good, but that is more due to my grammar nazi of a mother than to the US school system. I remember REVIEWING grammar, but never actually learning it.

It is an absolute pet peeve of mine when the language is totally mangled. I can certainly take some small mistakes, but too many spelling and grammar errors throw me off...ESPECIALLY in porn. I'm more able to deal with grammatical errors in a story with plot than I am in a story that is all about mood.

[delurker.livejournal.com]

I've actually squeaked with excitement at a particularly well punctuated fic. I remember one which used hyphens to very great effect, and it still makes me happy months later. :)

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

I suspect I speak for many, many people who worship at the feet of anyone who dares attempt the imposition of grammar rules on a fanfic archive. I can't count the number of stories with a halfway interesting plot which I've eventually had to stop reading because the grammar (and/or spelling) just finally made it too difficult to continue. And in a weird corollary, I've been known to read fairly boring stories which were written well just to revel in the correct use of language. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bettina_/]

When it comes to punctuation it's sometimes not easy to keep the different languages straight. Especially when one thing is wrong in the one language and is correct in the other language.