I nearly started crying today.

[bridgetrose]

I have been writing for a long time. Whether or not my writing abilities are any good is beside the point. However, I do feel very strongly about my command over the English language with regards to literature. Which includes grammar and punctuation. Am I perfect? No way! But I still pride myself on doing an exceptional job with editing my own works (and the works of others when I've occasionally offered my services as an editor.)

I've published quite a few stories over the past couple years. And during that time, I have had only one story get rejected. It was a minor issue with something that occurred in the story that went outside one of the requirements for publishing on this site. (I've forgotten the specific details, but it was an easy fix.)

Never once have I been rejected based on my grammar, formatting, etc. And I consider my ability to write engaging dialogue to be very good. Even with regards to the grammatical structure. I know all the rules about how to properly add punctuation for dialogue, to ensure it flows nicely and is easy for the reader to follow along with. (And most importantly: easy for the reader to know WHO is talking.)

So my latest entry (a story for the April Fool's Day contest) got rejected. And the reason for the rejection was because my dialogues were "not formatted correctly". They referred me to an article that was written over 20 years ago which gives all the various rules for how to structure dialogue in a story. Things like: Only ONE person's dialogue in any given paragraph. Where and when to add the comma. Etc.

But that's the thing... While I DID read the article, to make sure I wasn't missing something.. I discovered that I knew every single rule already. By heart. I have been living and breathing those rules for years. Since before high school. (I've been writing since I was in single digits.) So I thought, "How on earth did my story get rejected on this basis??"

Well, after I cooled down a little (and managed not to start crying), I went back through my story for the fifth time. During this fifth edit, I literally searched for every single line of dialogue and double checked the punctuation/grammar. While I did this, I found three "teeny tiny" little typos. Three. In a 21,000 word story. And this story is littered with dialogue. There are probably over 200 instances where someone speaks in this story. And of those, I found 3 minor typos. And they were so minor that I can't believe anyone would even pause as they read them. The dialogue still flowed. You knew who was talking. There was no issue.

So now I come to the heart of what upset me. Why am I suddenly being so scrutinized? I don't think I've ever read a single story posted on this site that doesn't have at least 3 to 5 minor typos. Have the moderators of the site decided to seek 100% perfection for all story entries now?? I was so frustrated with this, it nearly made me cry (as I mentioned above). I have spent over 25 hours writing and editing this story, and really giving it my all so I could get it posted in time for the upcoming contest.

I don't gain anything from posting here. Aside from friends. But monetarily, I receive zero. I write my stories (and post them) because I enjoy it. It's art to me. The same would be true if I decided to make paintings and put them on display for people to see for free. But on the flip side, Literotica stands to gain a lot by me posting stories. Sure, there are thousands of authors who also post. I get that. But I contribute, too. For free. And it benefits them alone. So I guess when I considered all of this, it made me so upset (devastated, honestly) that I was ready to quit. Stop posting my work.

This is more of a rant than anything. Although sometimes your responses help chill me out even more, which I very much appreciate.

Has anyone had a similar experience when submitting work recently?

~Bridgetrose

 

[ElectricBlue]

This is more of a rant than anything. Although sometimes your responses help chill me out even more, which I very much appreciate.

Has anyone had a similar experience when submitting work recently?

My suggestion would be to take a step back, now that you've vented, and take heart in the fact that probably everyone here has had stories rejected for one reason or another, especially in their early days.

We've all managed to cope, to figure out what was going wrong (most of it controllable by us, when all is said and done), and get it resolved. Sure, it might take a couple of goes to get it right. But when you do, your life is so much easier in the future.

Just because a reference document is twenty years old doesn't make it wrong. The fundamental rules of grammar and dialogue punctuation in particular have been around for a very long time, they change only very slowly - if they change at all. That's why something written three centuries ago can still be read now.

Digital publication has changed some formatting conventions, but not many. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation haven't changed much at all.

 

[PapaRomantic]

I had this experience several years ago, for some silly grammar thing that was so very trivial. In fact, I immediately to the story board and was able to find 5-10 stories with the exact same problem rather quickly.

I don't think you were being targeted. It just happens, and you make a couple of 'minor' changes and resubmit it and move on. I felt the same way you did, but realized it's their site and their standards and move on.

 

[XerXesXu]

I have been writing for a long time. Whether or not my writing abilities are any good is beside the point. However, I do feel very strongly about my command over the English language with regards to literature. Which includes grammar and punctuation. Am I perfect? No way! But I still pride myself on doing an exceptional job with editing my own works (and the works of others when I've occasionally offered my services as an editor.)

I've published quite a few stories over the past couple years. And during that time, I have had only one story get rejected. It was a minor issue with something that occurred in the story that went outside one of the requirements for publishing on this site. (I've forgotten the specific details, but it was an easy fix.)

Never once have I been rejected based on my grammar, formatting, etc. And I consider my ability to write engaging dialogue to be very good. Even with regards to the grammatical structure. I know all the rules about how to properly add punctuation for dialogue, to ensure it flows nicely and is easy for the reader to follow along with. (And most importantly: easy for the reader to know WHO is talking.)

So my latest entry (a story for the April Fool's Day contest) got rejected. And the reason for the rejection was because my dialogues were "not formatted correctly". They referred me to an article that was written over 20 years ago which gives all the various rules for how to structure dialogue in a story. Things like: Only ONE person's dialogue in any given paragraph. Where and when to add the comma. Etc.

But that's the thing... While I DID read the article, to make sure I wasn't missing something.. I discovered that I knew every single rule already. By heart. I have been living and breathing those rules for years. Since before high school. (I've been writing since I was in single digits.) So I thought, "How on earth did my story get rejected on this basis??"

Well, after I cooled down a little (and managed not to start crying), I went back through my story for the fifth time. During this fifth edit, I literally searched for every single line of dialogue and double checked the punctuation/grammar. While I did this, I found three "teeny tiny" little typos. Three. In a 21,000 word story. And this story is littered with dialogue. There are probably over 200 instances where someone speaks in this story. And of those, I found 3 minor typos. And they were so minor that I can't believe anyone would even pause as they read them. The dialogue still flowed. You knew who was talking. There was no issue.

So now I come to the heart of what upset me. Why am I suddenly being so scrutinized? I don't think I've ever read a single story posted on this site that doesn't have at least 3 to 5 minor typos. Have the moderators of the site decided to seek 100% perfection for all story entries now?? I was so frustrated with this, it nearly made me cry (as I mentioned above). I have spent over 25 hours writing and editing this story, and really giving it my all so I could get it posted in time for the upcoming contest.

I don't gain anything from posting here. Aside from friends. But monetarily, I receive zero. I write my stories (and post them) because I enjoy it. It's art to me. The same would be true if I decided to make paintings and put them on display for people to see for free. But on the flip side, Literotica stands to gain a lot by me posting stories. Sure, there are thousands of authors who also post. I get that. But I contribute, too. For free. And it benefits them alone. So I guess when I considered all of this, it made me so upset (devastated, honestly) that I was ready to quit. Stop posting my work.

This is more of a rant than anything. Although sometimes your responses help chill me out even more, which I very much appreciate.

Has anyone had a similar experience when submitting work recently?

~Bridgetrose

Are you re-reading it through in Lit's submissions panel, or in your original text document?

 

[NotWise]

No guess why it happened to you. I think it's probably a random act. I'll second EB's recommendation. Step back and relax.

Don't worry about the schedule. You have through March 24th (another month) to submit your story.

 

[Katie_Mae]

TLDR: I’m sorry you feel bad, it’s probably not personal. Perfection is not possible, even in a professionally edited work, there are typos. Resubmit it.
...

I was banned on a forum once for speaking about my husband. All the guys could talk about their wives/girlfriends, but any post where I mentioned the word “husband” was blocked from even being posted. It was a male dominated chat, so that had to be personal, right? Turns out, the “sb” in husband was getting caught up in the site’s profanity filter and there was no human actually checking if I was using vulgarities or not. When I understood that the site had simply set up a filter to block any variation of S.B, sb, s b etc it made me feel better to know I wasn’t targeted, and that the issue was some idiot with a filter.

It is my belief that Laurel (or anybody) doesn't read every entry which is submitted. Review? Yes. Actually read? No. Not all of them, any way.

I've heard other's say that dialogue formatting is a "pet peeve" of Laurel's. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, we can't really know or speak on her behalf, but I have heard it said when people are posting that their story got rejected for a typo in dialogue. It’s entirely possible that she has a review set up to flag any instance of “. And your story was declined based on “tripping the filter” rather than a demand for perfection.

I don't know if thinking about it as a tripping of a filter makes you feel better or worse, but I hope the former

It really sucks that your story was rejected for such a little thing, especially when you worked so hard on it. Maybe include a note in your re-submission that the dialogue formatting has been checked.

 

[Bamagan]

Has anyone had a similar experience when submitting work recently?

~Bridgetrose

Not recently, but yes, occasionally. It's a fairly common rejection topic, and the conventional wisdom seems to be that Laurel (the editor) has a particular pet peeve about dialogue grammar. Given the number of stories that get posted every week, there's no way she has time to do more than skim most of them. I suspect she just happened to look closely at one or more of the errors and decided to kick it back on the assumption that they would be more widespread. On the one hand, I can understand why she wouldn't want to spend much time scrutinizing 21k words to see how well it was edited. But I can also empathize with the frustration of getting called out on it, when there are stories that get passed through which are much less polished. Kind of like when you get a speeding ticket for going 5 over after watching people blaze past you going 15 or 20 over.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Turns out, the “sb” in husband was getting caught up in the site’s profanity filter and there was no human actually checking if I was using vulgarities or not. When I understood that the site had simply set up a filter to block any variation of S.B, sb, s b etc it made me feel better to know I wasn’t targeted, and that the issue was some idiot with a filter.

This is an amusing (though not if it happens to you, I suppose) internet phenomenon known for obvious reasons as the Scunthorpe Problem. It's not limited to Scunthorpe; Penistone and Clitheroe have similar issues.

 

[Katie_Mae]

This is an amusing (though not if it happens to you, I suppose) internet phenomenon known for obvious reasons as the Scunthorpe Problem. It's not limited to Scunthorpe; Penistone and Clitheroe have similar issues.

I googled Scunthorpe Problem. Good rabbit hole which gave me a bit of a laugh. Thanks

 

[bridgetrose]

My suggestion would be to take a step back, now that you've vented, and take heart in the fact that probably everyone here has had stories rejected for one reason or another, especially in their early days.

We've all managed to cope, to figure out what was going wrong (most of it controllable by us, when all is said and done), and get it resolved. Sure, it might take a couple of goes to get it right. But when you do, your life is so much easier in the future.

Just because a reference document is twenty years old doesn't make it wrong. The fundamental rules of grammar and dialogue punctuation in particular have been around for a very long time, they change only very slowly - if they change at all. That's why something written three centuries ago can still be read now.

Digital publication has changed some formatting conventions, but not many. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation haven't changed much at all.

Yes, I do understand that. And I appreciate you taking time to reply to me. I do feel like asserting that I don't consider this to be my "early days". I've posted 38 works, over the past 2.5 years. I don't need "a couple of goes" to get it right, in my opinion. The point they rejected me on (as I said) is something that I know extremely well, as a writer of many years. (I've probably written somewhere between 500k to 1mil words by now.)

And I was not saying the reference document was wrong. I was saying that every point mentioned in it is already part of my "writer's toolkit". I know those rules cold, like the back of my hand. I've been using them for ages. And I've corrected others on various points of how to properly format dialogue. In short: I know how to do it. Anything out was merely a typo, not anything else. But it just seemed ultra-critical this round.

The main point of my post was to ask if they are suddenly being extra critical of story posts. How could three extremely minor points get flagged, when I don't see this same scrutiny applied to every story.

Having said all this, I also read the other replies to my email (thank you all!) and I think I agree that they may simply "skim" these stories purely due to time constraints with so many submissions. And if they happened to zero in on even just one of the three tiny typos, maybe they decided there must be many of them and sent it back. I don't know.

I also had another friend suggest that they may be using some form of AI to do the grammatical scanning these days, which would potentially flag every mistake like that.

My LAST question: I wonder if perhaps they tend to be more meticulous on stories that are entered for contests? Since they will get higher exposure? I thought about this, and that helped chill me a little, also.

Anyway, I appreciate everyone jumping on this thread to respond to me.

 

[bridgetrose]

Not recently, but yes, occasionally. It's a fairly common rejection topic, and the conventional wisdom seems to be that Laurel (the editor) has a particular pet peeve about dialogue grammar. Given the number of stories that get posted every week, there's no way she has time to do more than skim most of them. I suspect she just happened to look closely at one or more of the errors and decided to kick it back on the assumption that they would be more widespread. On the one hand, I can understand why she wouldn't want to spend much time scrutinizing 21k words to see how well it was edited. But I can also empathize with the frustration of getting called out on it, when there are stories that get passed through which are much less polished. Kind of like when you get a speeding ticket for going 5 over after watching people blaze past you going 15 or 20 over.

Your little example of the speeders really made my day... thank you.

Tears successfully averted. Lol.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Having said all this, I also read the other replies to my email (thank you all!) and I think I agree that they may simply "skim" these stories purely due to time constraints with so many submissions. And if they happened to zero in on even just one of the three tiny typos, maybe they decided there must be many of them and sent it back. I don't know.

That would be my guess - a text bot finding those glitches and hitting a premature rejection notice. My guess is, it's not even been looked at by human eyes yet.

I also had another friend suggest that they may be using some form of AI to do the grammatical scanning these days, which would potentially flag every mistake like that.

My speculation, over the years, is that the site uses a basic key word scan for content, and a basic grammar check for punctuation and grammar. One thing for certain, it's a conveyor belt review process and every story streams through it. I don't think there's ever anything personal about it - we're all in the same queue (although I do believe Laurel does keep a profile on authors, but I suspect that's more for content compliance than basic construction).

My LAST question: I wonder if perhaps they tend to be more meticulous on stories that are entered for contests? Since they will get higher exposure? I thought about this, and that helped chill me a little, also.

Possibly, since the Contests have prizes, so submissions are conceivably held to higher standards. But I don't read much Contest content, so I've got no opinion on the overall standard of entries.

 

[RejectReality]

Laurel has always had a bee in her bonnet for punctuation around dialogue. Whether it's a pet peeve or those errors jump out at her more than others, it's always been the most common grammar rejection, and very often it's just one or two occurrences in a whole story.

There was no AI twenty years ago when this was happening with the same frequency. Some of the first "why did I get rejected" threads that weren't about underage that I can remember involved Weird Harold telling people to look at their dialogue punctuation, because that was almost always the problem. There also wasn't a specific rejection that told you it was about the dialogue punctuation. It was just a generic grammar rejection. At least now you have a much better idea of what you're looking for when you get nailed by it.

 

[SimonDoom]

You haven't submitted a segment of your text, so none of us knows for sure what the problem is, but my experience is that there is simply a certain random element in the Site's vetting process. I've had stories held up for a few weeks . . . for no reason whatsoever. Just because of Site error. It happens. Don't be too chagrined. Just soldier on, get advice where you can, and keep pushing your submissions.

 

[glynndah]

I've had one rejected repeatedly for a grammar/quotation mark errors and I still can't find the mistakes. I finally gave up and just deleted it. I'll rewrite it some day and resubmit it. Like he said, it's happened to all of us.

 

[TheLobster]

So you submitted a 10k+ word story (a guess, based on the "25h writing and editing"), and then either tripped up some automatic script that looks for mispunctuated dialogue, or had the misfortune of having your few typos stand out in the eyes of Laurel or whoever, who took a minute to quickly scroll through the text in search for particularly glaring issues.

And you took this "rejection" like it was your soulmate shooting down a marriage proposal, almost breaking and crying, and then coming here on the forum and actually crying?

This is peak AH, and we've had a lot of worthy competition as of late, too.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I agree it's likely to be some software that's been triggered, not a real person who's rejected you. Possibly some accents or special characters near quote marks not being rendered properly? I'd just resubmit via the text box, scan for obvious oddities, and add a note saying you have double-checked dialogue punctuation and it should be up to your usual standards.

The Scunthorpe problem is still sometimes a problem, according to my friend from there. I was just quite relieved I couldn't afford a house on Penistone Road, near where I live.

 

[StillStunned]

This is an amusing (though not if it happens to you, I suppose) internet phenomenon known for obvious reasons as the Scunthorpe Problem. It's not limited to Scunthorpe; Penistone and Clitheroe have similar issues.

I remember similar problems on a TTRPG forum, where it became impossible to discuss assassins.

Also, doesn't "Penistone" sound like a very painful affliction? Or else a euphemism for testicles.

 

[lovecraft68]

The only thing consistent about lit is its inconsistency. There are stories on here that have barely intelligible grammar and bad dialogue tags and they get through, then others don't, same as any rule.

I think what people are missing here in their usual rush to trip over themselves to defend the site, is that this person has been doing this for some time and knows all the rules.

Odds are this is another example of whatever Laurel uses to screen misfiring, or if its her doing quick glances through she saw something the wrong way.

Submit it again with a note that the rejection was an error. Anything with a note gets a longer look.

 

[onehitwanda]

This is an amusing (though not if it happens to you, I suppose) internet phenomenon known for obvious reasons as the Scunthorpe Problem. It's not limited to Scunthorpe; Penistone and Clitheroe have similar issues.

so does Cock Hill. And Fucking in Austria is a perennial favourite.

 

[Rustyoznail]

so does Cock Hill. And Fucking in Austria is a perennial favourite.

With photos by Richard Glasscock...

Anyway, back on track. Do what Lovecraft suggests. There was a rash of AI rejections recently, which seems to have calmed down. Grammar seems to have replaced it.

I'm guessing Laurel is playing with checking software, and it still needs tweaking.

 

[TheLobster]

Scunthorpe problem is a perennial classic, although that's the first I heard about mere two letters ("sb") being caught by some inane filtering software.

The most egregious example I knew of before this pertained to Dark Souls, a medieval dark fantasy game renowned for its unforgiving difficulty and very unique multiplayer features. Rumor has it that despite said medieval setting, the game would summarily reject any character name that contained the word "knight". It was especially bizarre considering that Knight was actually one of the classes you could select there, and developers also had no problem calling other classes Thief or Bandit.

So, what was it that was actually wrong with the word "knight"? Well, just look at it here:

KNIGHT

and then mentally remove the first letter, and then the final two.

...

Yup, that was the problematic sequence.

 

[onehitwanda]

Yup, that was the problematic sequence.

showing my age...

"Eureka!" cried the Software Developer. "I know what I shall do! I shall solve this profanity-filtering problem with the power of Regular Expressions..."

Smoke erupted in the air before him, a smell of burning capacitors and stale pizza filled the air, and from the fumes stepped the apparition of Jamie Zawinski

"Tell me, oh acolyte - you thought to solve this problem with Regular Expessions?" asked the spectre.

"... Yes, I think it will be an elegant and easy solution..." stammered the Software Developer, somewhat intimidated.

"Fool. Instead of solving one problem, you shall create two!" proclaimed the hacker.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I remember similar problems on a TTRPG forum, where it became impossible to discuss assassins.

Also, doesn't "Penistone" sound like a very painful affliction? Or else a euphemism for testicles.

It's pronounced PEN-iss-ton, which helps.

I wasn't sure whether my young kids could actually read or just recognise words, until they giggled when walking past the offending road.

Now YouTube and other sites have blocked so many 'undesirable' terms and concepts, you get workarounds like the horrendous 'unalived' for suicide. Some quite clever - 'rape' and 'sexual assault' are banned so people wrote SA'd followed by 'essayed', which has hardly otherwise been used as a verb this century, and 'paedo' and 'paedophile' also got banned so people would write about a 'PDF file' or just PDF or file...

Though my favourite circumvention of censorship is the use of Winnie-the-Pooh as code for Xi Jinping.

 

[StillStunned]

So, what was it that was actually wrong with the word "knight"? Well, just look at it here:


and then mentally remove the first letter, and then the final two.

...

Yup, that was the problematic sequence.

I got censored on a forum for typing "snigger".