Grammar Nazi?

[Bramblethorn]

Hammer - I guess I have a different take on our readers (which includes your readers). You referred to them as “pervy humans” and I get that - it’s not entirely unfair. Yet, were we somehow privy to who they actually are in real life, I suspect they’d run the gamut of humanity - from airline pilots to healthcare workers to clergy and on and on.

*pervy airline pilots, to pervy healthcare workers, to pervy clergy ;-)

 

[Bramblethorn]

But I think it's the writer's job to provide the most and best information that they can as skillfully as possible, according to the audience they hope to reach. In doing so, we show the reader that we care about HOW we communicate. That's where the art and the craft of writing lies: not just in more or less generally getting some points across, but in saying what we mean to say as well as we can.

If you've ever had a story just grab you with how well it's presented - not just how hot some scene or raw idea is, not just how relatable you find it, but with how the words reached you - you've experienced a story where the author really cared about word and punctuation choice.

When you say, "This shouldn't matter! I had a story. People did stuff, and readers can more or less tell who and what," you're essentially saying that you don't think the craft of writing matters.

I will say: not all rules of English are good. Some were invented by snobs who liked making rules for other people, as a kind of shibboleth to help distinguish those who had the right type of education from the plebs. Some are enforced as a way to try to dictate what subjects are important and what shouldn't be discussed. (Any time somebody complains about a "made-up word", you can be pretty sure it's actually the concept they don't like.)

But Literotica doesn't tend to enforce those kinds of rules, and leaving those aside, I think of spelling and grammar conventions as being a little bit like road signs. There's no fundamental reason that "give way"/"yield" signs needed to be inverted triangles and "stop" needed to be an octagon. But having a standard makes it easier for people to assimilate that information, leaving them with more capacity to focus on what the car ahead of them is doing.

Conventions serve the same purpose in writing. They're the grease that helps readers glide smoothly through the story without being tripped up and having to navigate their way through confusing sentences.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

poor standards.

 

[FeralSmile]

I will say: not all rules of English are good. Some were invented by snobs who liked making rules for other people, as a kind of shibboleth to help distinguish those who had the right type of education from the plebs.

The ones that most annoy me are the ones intended to force English to follow the grammatical rules of Latin, e.g. not ending sentences with prepositions and not splitting infinitives. That's something I'm not going to fucking put up with.

 

[Trionyx]

That's something I'm not going to fucking put up with.

That’s something up with which you will not fucking put.

Sorry, I just had to…

 

[BelleCanzuto]

I've repeatedly stated here that I'm a professional editor and proofreader, and have been for going on 25 years, with clients all the way up to the EU. I've explained to people the benefits of using Read Aloud to catch 99% of typos and inconsistencies.

I just used that on my newly submitted Winter Holiday story. Once I'd switched to the female voice* and sped it up a little, it wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it'd be. This story is very short for me (only about 4500 words). I'm not sure I'd have the patience to do it with a significantly longer story. But, I caught three or four typos that I'd missed as had the other person who looked it over for me. And it caught another couple of phrases that needed some tweaking.

All this to say, you've got a convert. (Not that you wanted one, necessarily).

*the default male voice was just to jarring against my internal voice as I read.

 

[Satsumabook123]

If stories were being rejected due to grammar errors none of my stories would have been published. I have never had a story rejected due to grammar.

 

[Pabiporffor]

I'm forever arguing with Grammarly. Yes, I know the word "actually" may be unnecessary but if I didn't want it there I wouldn't have typed it would I?
And God forbid if your characters speak colloquially or with a dialect, it'll have a hissy fit. Even something like, "I went to hospital," perfectly OK in proper English gets flagged up because the bloody Yanks want "the hospital" instead.

Personally, I've always found this site to be forgiving of my grammatical car crashes and typotitsup.

 

[SimonDoom]

If stories were being rejected due to grammar errors none of my stories would have been published. I have never had a story rejected due to grammar.

Nor have I, and I have caught mistakes (my readers have caught even more) in every story I've published. The Site obviously tolerates a fairly high degree of grammar and punctuation mistakes. One can see that by looking at the stories that have been published.

The truth is that those who are having their stories rejected on these grounds usually are not aware of how many mistakes they are making. Insisting upon a standard a little better than what they are offering is not grammar Naziism.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I gots no reason for no ones of you to be doesing no complaining bout my grammar useageing.

 

[Zootonius]

 

[yowser]

One puzzling bit to me is the apparent discrepancy between spelling/grammar bench-mark levels in the stories (a pretty low bar) vs. none that I can detect for Titles/Descriptions. If you skim even one page of stories in the 'New' lists, the errors are astonishing and don't even seem to have been screened at all.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

If stories were being rejected due to grammar errors none of my stories would have been published. I have never had a story rejected due to grammar.

That may be true, but she will reject a story for it.