Fragment annoyance.

[galaxygoddess]

I have a bit of a bitch.

I type everything in word so that my precious spellchecker can catch my mistakes. I'm horrible at transposing letters or leaving letters out completely when i type so it catches things for me. (I frequently spell "husband" "hsuabnd" etc etc) and often I use it to catch misplaced commas and semi-colons and such.

My main complaint though is "fragments".

I write my characters how people actually talk and people don't always talk grammatically correct. Especially when someone is answering a question.

example:
"Why?"

"Because I say so"

Boy that sends word into hysterics. And it's pissing me off because a few times it tries to auto correct me and it's really irritating the hell out of me.

We don't always have to be grammatically perfect on sentance right? As long as it's not glaringly bad like "she started, and stoppped, but that wasnt all, today, as it says."

I guess what I'm getting at, is does it bother anyone else? I have to admit, English was never my best subject (verb? adverb? what???) but at the same time, it just seems horribly labored to make sure every single sentance, especially when you're trying to capture the way someone talks, is incorrect and sends spell check into hysterics.

I mean honestly, with all the rules of english and all the nuances and this and that's, is it REALLY such a big damn deal if your sentance doesn't include a noun or a participle (what is that anyway? great now I have to go look up a word >.>)

 

[cloudy]

Ignore what it says. Spellchecker's fine, as far as it goes (and it confuses words, too, so you probably shouldn't rely on it that much), but the grammar checker? Useless for fiction writing. Ignore it.

Yes, it is such a big deal.

That's why everyone should have an editor, or at the very least, a trusted proofreader.

 

[rgraham666]

Having been a computer programmer there's no way I'm trusting one with my grammar.

 

[glynndah]

In my teacher mode sentence fragments are a definite problem.
In my writer mode they're about half the text.

 

[MarshAlien]

I've just turned off the grammar checker entirely, trusting to my real-life editor to find the things I don't find myself. Alternatively, you can just instruct the grammar checker not to identify "Fragments and Run-ons."