(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

[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::

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the em-dash thing is universal either, but then I tend to use one and not two, so I don't recall ever being edited for it.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'm American and I use the spaces. I was told that when it's not an actual em dash, when it's the text only two hyphens version (--) you put in the spaces, but if you have the actual em dash (—) you don't. Since I do everything text-only, having come up via Usenet/mailing lists where everything was text-only, I've just kind of stuck to that.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I use spaces with my em-dashes. I can't make myself read your latter example as anything other than hyphens.

Here via metafandom

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

There are -- or have been -- differences in US and UK punctuation with quote marks. (I'm not sure what's absolutely current among Brit authorities in these matters.) UK usage puts, or put, the period or comma that follows a quote-marked speech *outside* the quote marks, which is often logical, but American usage keeps them inside. UK quote marks are, or have been, singular (with quotes-in-quotes using double quote marks), and American usage reverses this, another triumph of tradition over logic. I don't know exactly why, since American spelling usually opts for logic over tradition compared to British, if either logic or tradition can be said to apply.

I'm American, but have read long and much in British-published works, and a few style books, too. There are differences in comma and hyphen usage between UK and US style, but that's more stylistic than strictly rule-bound. Oh, and UK usage omits periods after common abbreviations, while US usage glories in splashing about periods as much as possible.

The thing you mention about the em-dashes isn't something I've seen as a UK vs US difference. As far as I know, an em-dash should be two hyphens (if you have to use hyphens, originally on typewriters and now from ascii limitations), to make it long. That's the definition, that an em-dash is a *long* dash. The short ones created by Word collpased into html are abominations. I like the spaces around them, and do that even though I was taught they should be flush up against the words on either side, but it has never looked to me as if there's a trans-Atlantic difference in usage.

Um, I'm a grammar bitch too, and probably a bigger one than you when I'm awake. But slower. I'll spare you the lecture about em-dashes vs. en-dashes vs. real hyphens and what they're for. And strictly speaking, this is all about punctuation rather than grammar, though bad punctuation can lead to bad grammar.

To follow most punctuation history you need to know about linotype machines and all the previous history of printing. Much of that was Before My Time, but I've heard a few rants from people who were there, which have been very educational. Don't let them start reminiscing about the smell of hot lead, though...

Re: Here via metafandom

[temaris.livejournal.com]

I was once told that the why of American quote punctuation is apparently do do with printing presses. I was told that a single quote was a half size piece of type, and very fiddly; a period is a full height piece. It was easier to put the period after the quote because then the type was held in more securely -- or something like that. There is no grammatical erason for it, it is simply so that the printers' lives were made easier.

Now that we don't use printers with movable type any more, there is, as far as I can tell, no reason that this usage should persist.

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

See, I'm American, and while I'd use the longer dashes, I'd put spaces around them. But that has little to do with what I know about grammar and everything to do with what I think looks best. Not having the spaces just looks weird to me. I have no idea what's actually correct.

[the_rck]

I'd use dashes in your sample sentence like this: 'It was-- to pardon the pun-- grammariffic.' Mostly, however, I use dashes in dialogue to indicate a particular rhythm of speech, and in those cases, I don't necessarily pair them.

Of course, I learned to type in the early 80s, so my spacing tends to follow typewriter rules.