Help or suggestions.

[milfman23]

Hello, i am new here have been publishing alot lately. But had some feedback on grammar and spelling. I use spellcheck and get high 90% but i get feedback particulary from americans is this because i speak/write english 'english'?

 

[Cagivagurl]

by Anonymous user on 05/29/2023

English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?!?

That was a comment on a story I wrote recently.
My advice is get used to it.
I am not an American, and do not write like one.
To survive on lit. You will need to develop a thick skin. It will be your best defence.

Cagivagurl

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hello, i am new here have been publishing alot lately. But had some feedback on grammar and spelling. I use spellcheck and get high 90% but i get feedback particulary from americans is this because i speak/write english 'english'?

No.

I have over a million words here in Australian English (which is English English with gum trees instead of oaks), and not a single comment querying anything. Well, one bozo tried to pick me up on a deliberate anachronism, and ended up with egg on his face.

You're either attracting an audience who don't know any better, or you're doing something grammatically dubious. Check your dialogue punctuation, that's usually the biggest source of problems.

 

[CJLahrainn]

ElectricBlue66 is right.

Original, from your most recent upload:

"Nice and wet." Penny said as she settled next to mum. And licked her lips.

Corrected:

"Nice and wet," Penny said as she settled next to mum and licked her lips.

I don't think I saw a comma at all in the parts I looked at. It's always a comma after dialogue when attributing a speaker. "I'm off to work," said Jane. (Unless it's a ? or !, of course.) Not using commas is also creating sentence fragments in your paragraphs. Sometimes authors do that on purpose to create a specific cadence, but that's not how it read in your story. Sometimes there's a period where nothing is needed, sometimes when a comma is needed. I'm thinking that's most, possibly all, of the issue.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Looking at your author profile, three out of ten stories have errors in the taglines:

"SImon's tale of Penny." - should be "Simon's".
"Thomas talks about his english chocolate." - "English" should be capitalised here.
"A day of first for Grace." - should presumably be "firsts".

The tagline + title are usually a reader's first impression of your work. If 30% of those have errors in them, that doesn't bode well for the stories. And looking at your latest chapter, there are obvious typos in the second and third paragraphs:

Since Friday I had fucked by closest friend's mum. And my own. And now because of that I got to fuck them both, while he watched.

AS my father was away, mum was a bit more unrestrained.

Skimming, there are plenty more errors, e.g.:

I fucked my mum again in the kitchen and longue

After we parked. Coincidentally, coincidentally was next to Grace's car in the car park. I got out and started to walk to my common area before first period.

This is not about UK vs. US English. Whatever you're using for spelling/grammar-checking is not up to the job.

 

[lustychimera]

As an American, I love "advert." Seriously, great word. Also, I love "cunt." Grey is the more natural spelling, IMO, but colour is fucking stupid.

Petty preferences aside, British spellings won't detract from the experience a single iota for a competent reader.

Anybody who comments that they don't understand are in the former half of a Bell curve and probably mouth the words as they read along.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Hello, i am new here have been publishing alot lately. But had some feedback on grammar and spelling. I use spellcheck and get high 90% but i get feedback particulary from americans is this because i speak/write english 'english'?

I see you do have a ten-part series here and it's doing quite well.

1. I use the free version of Grammarly, which requires a lot of judgment calls, and the Word spellchecker before that. Those help, although other people here prefer different programs.

2. Let's just call it The United Kingdom! I might call it "Britishisms?" Most Americans should be able to figure it out or just look it up, as long as you don't overdo it. I've used "lorry" because I was using "truck" too much in a story. "Bonnet" for the hood of a car is going to confuse some people.

3. In your post, you have not capitalized "I," except for one exception! Also, you didn't capitalize "Americans" or "English." You also have problems with punctuation, with run-on sentences as the result. That's pretty basic stuff. I should look at your series and see what you did in there.

 

[alohadave]

Hello, i am new here have been publishing alot lately. But had some feedback on grammar and spelling. I use spellcheck and get high 90% but i get feedback particulary from americans is this because i speak/write english 'english'?

I wouldn't worry too much about it. For a long time, I thought the site was based in the UK based on how many authors are very clearly writing in the Queen's English (does it become the King's English now with Charles in charge?).

 

[djrip]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. For a long time, I thought the site was based in the UK based on how many authors are very clearly writing in the Queen's English (does it become the King's English now with Charles in charge?).

...of our days...

 

[milfman23]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. For a long time, I thought the site was based in the UK based on how many authors are very clearly writing in the Queen's English (does it become the King's English now with Charles in charge?).

Thanks and I do believe it becomes the 'King's English'

 

[KeithD]

ElectricBlue66 is right.

Original, from your most recent upload:

"Nice and wet." Penny said as she settled next to mum. And licked her lips.

Corrected:

"Nice and wet," Penny said as she settled next to mum and licked her lips.

I don't think I saw a comma at all in the parts I looked at. It's always a comma after dialogue when attributing a speaker. "I'm off to work," said Jane. (Unless it's a ? or !, of course.) Not using commas is also creating sentence fragments in your paragraphs. Sometimes authors do that on purpose to create a specific cadence, but that's not how it read in your story. Sometimes there's a period where nothing is needed, sometimes when a comma is needed. I'm thinking that's most, possibly all, of the issue.

And what is pointed out here isn't a matter of any other form of English being different from Americanese.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm English and write in UK English. A few people don't like it, but in your case you've got loads of typos and grammatical errors in your stories and even just in that post.

It looks like you couldn't be arsed to edit or proof-read at all, which will put people off given there's another thousand stories they could look at instead of yours.

 

[ElectricBlue]

2. Let's just call it The United Kingdom! I might call it "Britishisms?" Most Americans should be able to figure it out or just look it up, as long as you don't overdo it. I've used "lorry" because I was using "truck" too much in a story. "Bonnet" for the hood of a car is going to confuse some people.

This is my point, constantly, on this topic - that's your problem, not the writer's. This notion that we should be catering for insular American readers is bullshit, frankly.

Why should I write something less than my own culture, my own language, just so Americans can cope?

This guy's problem though, isn't that - he needs to learn basic grammar, basic punctuation. Where he comes from doesn't matter one iota.

 

[gunhilltrain]

This is my point, constantly, on this topic - that's your problem, not the writer's. This notion that we should be catering for insular American readers is bullshit, frankly.

Why should I write something less than my own culture, my own language, just so Americans can cope?

This guy's problem though, isn't that - he needs to learn basic grammar, basic punctuation. Where he comes from doesn't matter one iota.

I can get most Britishisms if they are related to transportation (what a surprise that is!). Sexual terms, not so much. I've seen gigolos referred to as "rent boys" in England, I think, and "ice boys," but that seems to be mostly in the Caribbean or Africa.

In New York, there was a vogue for "mad" as a synonym for "very." Yes, it was mostly used by Blacks and Latinos. I would hear someone refer to a cake as "mad sweet." Not sure if it was used in other cities, and it seems to be receding, as much slang does.

 

[KeithD]

This is my point, constantly, on this topic - that's your problem, not the writer's. This notion that we should be catering for insular American readers is bullshit, frankly.

I totally agree with the provincial insularity of most Americans. I lived extensively abroad and could see each time I returned to the States how high a proportion of Americans simply can't and don't look at the world beyond their smart phone screens. They do watch British TV productions, so you'd think they'd pick up on what a lorry is in their minds--but most Americans don't bother to try.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I can get most Britishisms if they are related to transportation (what a surprise that is!). Sexual terms, not so much. I've seen gigolos referred to as "rent boys" in England, I think, and "ice boys," but that seems to be mostly in the Caribbean or Africa.

In New York, there was a vogue for "mad" as a synonym for "very." Yes, it was mostly used by Blacks and Latinos. I would hear someone refer to a cake as "mad sweet." Not sure if it was used in other cities, and it seems to be receding, as much slang does.

I'm always using various urban dictionaries to check the meaning of slang within stories, but that's more a generational thing, not geographical.

Australia is evidently more polyglot than America on the whole, probably because our free to air television feed has always come both from the UK and the US, and we've had a multicultural channel SBS for decades. Streaming has made some difference in the last ten years because the content has been more from the US, but the best TV writing, I reckon, is still out of the UK. But then, I'm biased .

 

[Trionyx]

England and America are two countries separated by a common language” (George Bernard Shaw)....don't mean to ignore the Aussies, Kiwis, etc, etc, etc.

 

[KeithD]

England and America are two countries separated by a common language” (George Bernard Shaw)....don't mean to ignore the Aussies, Kiwis, etc, etc, etc.

Just on the margin, though--particularly with BBC English. It's not like the separation of English and Swahili.

 

[ronde]

I would agree with most of the above. It's probably not the difference between British English and American English that is the problem. I've written stories set entirely in Old England and I use the British spellings of words and some British expressions and I've never gotten a comment about that. If I were you, I'd continue to write the words as you learned to spell them. It will make the writing more comfortable for you.

I'm not sure what you mean about getting high 90% when you spell check. Does the spell check just tell you how you did? Your spell checker should check each word and flag any incorrect spelling. It will probably also flag words not commonly in use such as most current slang. At least you'll have an opportunity to examine the spelling of each one and correct it as required. Also, never make the mistake of clicking "change all" when you change a word. My copy of word doesn't distinguish between names and words, so if I was to change "mum" to "mother" and then click "change all", it would also turn "mumble' into "motherble", and "chrysamtheimum" to "chrysanthemother". Don't make the mistake of adding the slang to your spellchecker's dictionary unless you intend to corrupt it too much for use in business correspondence.

Word also highlights things like missing commas, extra commas, repeated words, some syntax errors, and in some cases sentences that don't make sense. If your word processor doesn't have that feature, you should probably find one that does.

 

[gunhilltrain]

England and America are two countries separated by a common language” (George Bernard Shaw)....don't mean to ignore the Aussies, Kiwis, etc, etc, etc.

There is also Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, at least.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'm always using various urban dictionaries to check the meaning of slang within stories, but that's more a generational thing, not geographical.

Australia is evidently more polyglot than America on the whole, probably because our free to air television feed has always come both from the UK and the US, and we've had a multicultural channel SBS for decades. Streaming has made some difference in the last ten years because the content has been more from the US, but the best TV writing, I reckon, is still out of the UK. But then, I'm biased .

It used to be geographical in the United States (before World War II?) but yes, it's more generational now. Using "urban" dictionaries does help.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Just on the margin, though--particularly with BBC English. It's not like the separation of English and Swahili.

For every British movie and TV show I've seen, I understand almost everything that is said. Maybe Cockney would be a bit more difficult - does that even still exist?

In New York, a lot of Yiddish words were well understood by many people, Jewish or not. That is probably starting to fade.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I totally agree with the provincial insularity of most Americans. I lived extensively abroad and could see each time I returned to the States how high a proportion of Americans simply can't and don't look at the world beyond their smart phone screens. They do watch British TV productions, so you'd think they'd pick up on what a lorry is in their minds--but most Americans don't bother to try.

I'll take your word on Americans being more smartphone addicted than people elsewhere, since you did live overseas.

 

[HordHolm]

I'll take your word on Americans being more smartphone addicted than people elsewhere, since you did live overseas.

I'd say that whilst there was a time when that was true, parts of the world have probably caught up at the least if not overtaken at speed. When I travel around on the Metro in the central European capital where I live there's usually about one obvious book reader per carriage and everyone else has their phone out (which isn't to say they aren't reading a book, of course).

I do remember seeing one statistic that I found worrying about the US, and that was that around 70% of US citizens get their understanding of the rest of the world from celebrities. But whilst that's an 'eeek' stat, I actually doubt it's that much better in the UK or France or Poland or wherever. The UK has more than its fair share of people who go on holiday to Spain and believe that cross-cultural understanding is only a matter of saying 'chips!' increasingly loudly until they get presented with a portion of fries by process of elimination. And on the flip side I've met American scientists and professors and writers who have been very worldly wise. Ignorance, in short, is international.

 

[KeithD]

I'll take your word on Americans being more smartphone addicted than people elsewhere, since you did live overseas.

When I lived overseas, smartphones didn't exist.