Deliberate spelling and grammar errors in text messages

Mogrem

Mr
Joined
Aug 13, 2021
Posts
101
Hi all. I have just had a story rejected because of spelling mistakes.

The prose proper is fine, albeit with British spellings and idioms, which I assume isn't an issue.

However there are transcripts of text messages. Some of them are sent by characters whilst drunk. Many of the messages are deliberately sloppily written, in much the same way you expect them to be. We're not talking 2005 era text-speak here, just a scattering of "theyre", "tho", uncapitalised letters, and the odd misplaced punctuation mark, that sort of thing.

Should I resubmit it as it is with a message to the moderator explaining it is a deliberate choice? Or is there a site style which frowns upon that sort of writing, meaning I have to write the messages out all nicely in King's English and just rely on the reader to imagine the drunken typos?

Thanks in advance for any advice given.

Mogrem

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EDIT: It also occurs to me that it may well be that the process is semi-automated, i.e. a story gets flagged if it goes over a certain number of spelling mistakes, at which point an editor looks through the flagged lines as see's, "Yup, those are errors." If that's the case then without context it wouldn't be obvious that the typos were deliberate. Or of course it could be all done manually. I'd be interested to know either way.
 
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I've not had a problem with such texts being rejected.
I do put my text messages in single quotes and have the surrounding words explain context. Dialogue similarly involves casual spelling and dialect words. No issues with UK usage, either.

I'd resubmit as others have suggested, but also try pasting the story direct into the Lit website, as the Preview can show up problems with formatting which may be the issue.
 
Given the number of submissions, it seems likely that stories get run through some form of computer screening to catch and reject stories with serious spelling/grammar issues as well as forbidden content (eg.under-age, snuff, etc). A note in the admin box will get human eyes on it.

As the others have said, deliberate ‘errors’ of that sort should work, no problem. Resubmit.

Good luck.
 
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