Quality of English too strict considering broken editor system?

[MrIllusion]

Hello,

My last 4 stories were recently rejected because my English wasn't good enough. There clearly was a change in policy in the last 6 months or so, because my previous 40ish stories were all accepted.

On each of those 4 times I was invited to use the volunteer editor program. Since late 2016 I tried contacting a few editors whose description seemed to be a good fit with my stories. It didn't work. At all. One editor even offered me unsolicited help in a comment to my story. I contacted him, sent him the story to edit and here we are, many months later, with no news from him or edited story.

In early April I contacted about 15 volunteers, chosen amongst those who had most recently updated their profiles.

Of those 15:

-1 agreed and returned my edited story after a couple of days. Perfect! (But he didn't reply to my request of editing another story.)
-1 replied to tell me that he was too busy. Perfectly understandable.
-2 said yes, got a story and one month later I still have no stories back from them.

The 11 others didn't even reply.

Maybe some of you have been lucky and found a good and stable editor. I haven't. Now I can't publish my stories.

I readily agree that my English isn't perfect. I try my best but it's not my first language and it shows. Nevertheless, my stories get a lot of reads, get what I consider great votes and the vast majority of comments and feedback are positive.

Now, I wouldn't mind having to send my stories to an editor if the system was working. But given that it's not, I think that the new rules for the quality of English are too strict.

Thanks for making this far.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Then work to improve your English. It doesn't appear to be that bad. Probably just some errors in grammar or punctuation. Not like you're writing a grand manuscript. Take the time to edit yourself.

 

[MrIllusion]

I try! And it is getting better. But when one of my story is rejected I keep getting the advice to use the volunteer editor program as if it were an easy solution. It's not.

Would the people making these decisions here be so strict if there were no editor program? If not, should they stop being so strict given that the program is not working?

 

[Hard_Rom]

Standards have to be kept up. Its the responsibility of the author the make sure their grammar and punctuation is correct not the sites.

 

[Libsam]

This sounds like racist microaggression.

Even American Universities wouldn't do this to the OP.
Like the University of Washington Tacoma:

http://i.imgur.com/HznGOx7.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/B0LJoNH.jpg

 

[MrIllusion]

That's not the point.

The standards were "pushed higher" recently, not just "kept up". (As I said, I published roughly 40 stories without an editor, years back when my English was worse than it is now.)

Asking for higher standards when you have a good program to help authors is one thing, but it's quite another when that system is not working.

 

[extreme_hetro_sex]

Hello,

My last 4 stories were recently rejected because my English wasn't good enough. There clearly was a change in policy in the last 6 months or so, because my previous 40ish stories were all accepted.

On each of those 4 times I was invited to use the volunteer editor program. Since late 2016 I tried contacting a few editors whose description seemed to be a good fit with my stories. It didn't work. At all. One editor even offered me unsolicited help in a comment to my story. I contacted him, sent him the story to edit and here we are, many months later, with no news from him or edited story.

In early April I contacted about 15 volunteers, chosen amongst those who had most recently updated their profiles.

Of those 15:

-1 agreed and returned my edited story after a couple of days. Perfect! (But he didn't reply to my request of editing another story.)
-1 replied to tell me that he was too busy. Perfectly understandable.
-2 said yes, got a story and one month later I still have no stories back from them.

The 11 others didn't even reply.

Maybe some of you have been lucky and found a good and stable editor. I haven't. Now I can't publish my stories.

I readily agree that my English isn't perfect. I try my best but it's not my first language and it shows. Nevertheless, my stories get a lot of reads, get what I consider great votes and the vast majority of comments and feedback are positive.

Now, I wouldn't mind having to send my stories to an editor if the system was working. But given that it's not, I think that the new rules for the quality of English are too strict.

Thanks for making this far.

I understand your problem. I am also a non-native English speaker. I sent a couple of stories to five different editors, none of them sent back the edited stories. I also tried to send the stories to editors listed on the editor's forum here. They didn't respond.

 

[hashtag46]

..........

 

[Nezhul]

I don't understand why people say it's broken.

It's not.

I've posted a number of stories here in the past, and I always found myself editors through the VE program. Just sort the editors based on the category, then check the profiles of a few that have last updated their profile in 2017 or later 2016. When you find an editor you like - write to him, describing in detail your story, the fetishes you have in it, the length in words and what exactly do you need from the editor.

Copy this message and just send it to 3-4 other editors that you found and liked.

If after 2 days none responded - write to another batch of 3 or 4 editors.

The longest it took me to find a VE was 5 days. The shortest 1 day.
If several editors respond at once (which happened to me once) - just politely excuse yourself, pick one of them and work with him, and write an appology to the others. This works fine, but again I only ever ran into this once.

Also before you send your manuscript, take care to ask the VE, politely, how long does he/she estimate it will take to edit your work. That depends on the size, of course, but in my experience 10k words take no more than a week, and in fact often take less.

The system is not broken. You just can't use it properly, but that's your problem.
I agree it may use some renovation and cleanup of dead accounts, but it's not dysfunctional.

p.s. I'm not a native English speaker myself.

 

[ChloeTzang]

This sounds like racist microaggression.

Even American Universities wouldn't do this to the OP.
Like the University of Washington Tacoma:

That's university. This is real life.

 

[KatieTay]

I'm frankly stunned by this. MrIllusion, your English (as evinced *here* at least) is definitely more than adequate!

Do you have a link to any existing published stories before your last 4? Maybe we could take a look.

 

[RejectReality]

I took a quick look through your published stories, and what's most likely causing the rejections is the same thing that causes most rejections: Punctuation in dialogue.

This seems to be a pet peeve for Laurel, and learning to do this one thing correctly will prevent a huge number of rejections.

I looked at her squarely and said, slowly:

There's never a reason to use a colon when punctuating around dialogue. This was in several of the stories I skimmed. You're lucky any of them got through, considering how quick with the reject button Laurel is on this issue.

I looked at her squarely and said, slowly, "The quotation that I forgot to copy."

"Good night Erica." I replied.

Whenever you use a tag after a quotation, you should change any full stops ( periods ) to commas. Any other punctuation remains the same ( ? ! )

Good night, Erica," I replied.

Looking at him, she said "Think you're going

This one is in your most recently released story. Whenever you have a tag before a quotation, it should have a comma. Where you used to use a colon in old stories, you should simply replace it with a comma, and you should be golden.

Looking at him, she said, "Thing you're going..."

Work on this one thing. I can pretty much guarantee you it will dramatically reduce the number of rejections you're receiving.

 

[CyranoJ]

My last 4 stories were recently rejected because my English wasn't good enough. There clearly was a change in policy in the last 6 months or so, because my previous 40ish stories were all accepted.

First of all, respect to anyone writing in a non-native language. Not easy to do.

Secondly, from what I can see of your previous stories, you've been doing pretty well and frankly there are native speakers on Lit who are having worse struggles with grammar.

Third, I can't speculate on changes of policy or the specific reasons for the rejection of your latest stories, not having seen them. However, I will note that even experienced writers have been known to get overconfident about quality from time to time. (If it can happen to Margaret Atwood it can happen to anyone. ) I would recommend just contacting Laurel and asking if there's been any such change instead of demanding that standards be adjusted or readjusted; that's not something any of us can comment usefully on, as we're all working blind.

 

[holliday1960]

To the OP, it is likely with recent technical changes to the site, the programs they use for screening stories may have changed as well. This could account for recent rejections rather than a raise in standards as you suggest. If that is the case, then the new screening program may be more selective than the previous one. None of us can know for sure, but it is only one possibility.

The rest of this is directed to anyone who has a complaint about the Volunteer Editor program here, I do some volunteer editing and I make it very clear before agreeing to do so that my abilities are limited. I am not a professional editor. If you want a professional who will jump when you call, and who will work on YOUR expected timeline, HIRE a professional. Editing is hard, time consuming work. If you dont believe me, give it a try.

Volunteers have families, jobs, and personal issues that can restrict them in their efforts. I agree that if one commits to a story, they should do all in their power to complete it in a timely fashion, but unforeseen things do happen. When I edit a story, I dont just go through it once and call that good enough. I read and reread more than a dozen times to attempt to remove all obvious mistakes. That takes a hell of a lot of time. If I edit for you, that is time your story is consuming out of my life. That is time I am gifting you. Every unpaid editor or reader is giving you a GIFT of time... precious time they could be spending doing a million other things and more often than not, complaints are all they get in return. It is no wonder they drop from the program and are non-responsive.

As a volunteer, I have literally rejected stories by people whose first language is English because the stories were so badly written it would take too much time to correct. LIT does the same thing. They reject stories by English speaking authors in large numbers, so any claim of racism or bias is completely unfounded.

I will point out what has already been stated, USE a grammar/spell check program before you even think about asking for a beta reader and/or editor to help you. Doing that alone will probably get your story through the screening process. If it doesn't, then the only options are to work within the Volunteer program as it is, or hire a professional.

I also should point out that GOOGLE DOCS spell check misses a large number of mistakes that a program like Word 2016 will find. Google Docs is FREE, Word 2016 is not free...you get what you pay for.

 

[KatieTay]

Ha! I see. It is most likely what RejectReality has said, yes.

 

[lovecraft68]

Of course the site cheerleader is ignoring the fact the guy had 40 stories published with no issues, now suddenly its an issue. We wouldn't want to talk about the real issue which is the inconsistent half ass screening process.

Also ignoring the fact the site keeps referring to the VE program which they know has been a broken unreliable mess for years, but keep sending them there. But I'm sure that's a case of it being an automatic message she's failed to change because its tough to find those few minutes to do that in such a short period of...years.

 

[MrIllusion]

Hello all!

Well, that's a lot of replies.

A few points:
-The stories that have been edited always begin with a "Edited by..." comment. Otherwise it's just me.

-Nezhul: you do realize that in my first post I explained that I did everything you suggested me to do?

-Holiday1960: I know that, and I pointed it out in my first post. But if someone updates their editor status and then gets a message days later I expect them to simply reply with a "Sorry, I'm too busy." email. Maybe I'm old fashioned?

-RejectReality: thank you for mentioning the point about commas. The last editor I worked with said that he corrected a lot of punctuation errors. Then again I found some basic guides online that contradicted what he told me. What seems clear to me is that punctuation is not handled in English like it is in French.

-The only specific comment I got for a rejected story was mistakes with homophones. I try to be especially careful with the usual suspects: its/it's, then/than, there/they're/their, but maybe I missed a few.

I'll give grammarly a try and I'll watch out for wild commas and semi-colons! :-D

Thanks for the inputs!

 

[LeandraNyx]

The only specific comment I got for a rejected story was mistakes with homophones. I try to be very careful with its/it's, then/than, there/they're/their, but maybe I missed a few.

Those are so easy to miss. Straight up, before I consider a story to be "clean," I'll cntrl+F all the homophones I've used and double check to make sure they're correct. Takes fucking forever, but it's worth it, IMHO. I find it works a lot better than doing a final read through to catch them, or even collaborating with an editor.

 

[RejectReality]

It doesn't matter what has gone through in the past. The stories aren't going through now. The author wants those stories to go through. I've pointed out the most common grammar rejection, found it to be present in existing stories, and offered some quick examples to correct it.

Doing so will most likely result in more stories going through. Probably far more, considering the percentage of stories rejected for this issue over the years.

Nothing you're going on about matters if the author is able to get stories accepted, which is what I'm trying to assist with. Considering your whole rant is about how the site "doesn't care", accepting that premise means bringing it up is of absolutely no use to the OP. If the site doesn't care and they aren't going to change anything, that's a dead end.

Correcting the grammar issues triggering the rejections is an actual path forward toward the goal of putting the work in front of readers.

Of course the site cheerleader is ignoring the fact the guy had 40 stories published with no issues, now suddenly its an issue. We wouldn't want to talk about the real issue which is the inconsistent half ass screening process.

Also ignoring the fact the site keeps referring to the VE program which they know has been a broken unreliable mess for years, but keep sending them there. But I'm sure that's a case of it being an automatic message she's failed to change because its tough to find those few minutes to do that in such a short period of...years.

 

[holliday1960]

Of course the site cheerleader is ignoring the fact the guy had 40 stories published with no issues, now suddenly its an issue. We wouldn't want to talk about the real issue which is the inconsistent half ass screening process.

Also ignoring the fact the site keeps referring to the VE program which they know has been a broken unreliable mess for years, but keep sending them there. But I'm sure that's a case of it being an automatic message she's failed to change because its tough to find those few minutes to do that in such a short period of...years.

But, LC, in all fairness if we didn't have the half-ass screening process, and had a full-ass screening process instead... the world of Lit would be such a lonely place.

 

[hylas_]

I've read many stories on lit with language much worse than in the OP's posts here in this very thread... I'm puzzled by this.

Telling a foreign language speaker to edit themselves and just "get gud" is pointless. My first language isn't English either, and I think my English's pretty decent, but I will never be able to edit my own English language writing the way a native speaker can.

Finding an editor can be tough... I've never tried the VE program, but I've had success in the editor's forum. Either by posting my own "Looking for an editor" thread, or by contacting the folks that post in the "Currently available to edit" thread.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I took a quick look through your published stories, and what's most likely causing the rejections is the same thing that causes most rejections: Punctuation in dialogue.

This seems to be a pet peeve for Laurel, and learning to do this one thing correctly will prevent a huge number of rejections.

And an easy thing for a text bot to find.

I agree with RejectReality, learn and apply the fundamental punctuation rules, and your rejection rate should drop considerably. It's a common theme when these threads come around: get punctuation right. It's tougher for a non-native English writer though, given other languages have different practices, so you have my sympathy there.

I don't know what the solution is - run the basic spell and grammar checks in your writing software is obvious. I find nearly all my silly edit mistakes just by running spell check, and have a standard set of "find and replace" searches - although they are more to capture repeated stylistic habits such as "...and then..." and changing words. You could do something similar, once you've figured out the basic punctuation mistakes being made.

But dropping the standards isn't a solution, that just makes the problem worse.

 

[CyranoJ]

Spelling and grammar checks unfortunately are only really useful to people who already know the rules of the language well. Employed by non-native speakers (or marginally literate native speakers) there's actually the potential of their introducing new errors or absurdities instead of eliminating them.

The OP really does need an editor, probably. Hope they find one.

 

[my_other_life]

I ran into dialogue punctuation issues on my most recent story and was referred to an article by Whispersecret that fixed the problems. I'm a native English speaker and didn't know (or more likely long since forgot) these rules.

After reading Whispersecret's "How-To" I summarized the information down to the six rules with examples. I also highlighted key parts of the most common situations I have trouble remembering (Rules 2-6). The summary shown below now goes on the top of my new stories while I'm writing them so I can quickly reference it every time I write dialogue.

I also had trouble with using too many commas but there's a great How To article on that topic too.


Rule 1. Quotation marks bracket the exact words the character is saying.
Rule 2. If your quotation comes before the tag, the comma goes inside the quotation marks.
"Your cock can't possibly be nine inches long," the doctor said.
Rule 3. If your tag comes first, the comma is outside of the quotation marks and after the tag.
Rule 4. If your tag comes first, capitalize the first word that is uttered by the character.
Rule 5. If your tag comes first, the ending mark for the sentence goes inside the quotation marks.
Larry said, "Her tits were like cannonballs."
Rule 6. If your character is asking a question or exclaiming something, the ending mark goes inside the quotation marks. If the tag follows the quote, you need to add a period.
"How many shaved pussies have you licked?" he asked.
She asked him candidly, "Will you fuck me?"
Rule 7. If you put the tag in the middle of a quote, you can attach it to the first quote or the second. Follow the other rules for adding punctuation. Make sure each sentence has its own ending mark.
"I can't believe it," he said with a grin. "I actually saw her panties."
"I can't believe it." He said with a grin, “I actually saw her panties!"
Rule 8. Each time someone new speaks you start a new paragraph (double indent).
Rule 9. If one character has a long speech that stretches over more than one paragraph, you only need the closing quotation marks at the end of the last paragraph.

 

[SamScribble]

Perhaps Lit should have two authorial categories: one for writers who have mastered their craft; and one for story-teller enthusiasts who aspire to master their craft.

Having, at various times, taught both non-fiction writing and short story writing, I am a firm believer in the idea that proficiency comes, in part, from practice. I was always happy for new writers to learn the skills and the conventions as they went along. But I had little time for would-be writers who thought that skills and conventions were for writers of another era.