Strangest rejection reason

[MelanieShaman]

SO, i just got this rejection reason.

• Please fix the formatting of your dialogue. The essay "How to Make Characters Talk" in our Writer's Resources section has more information on the formatting of dialogue if you have further questions: https://www.literotica.com/s/how-to-make-characters-talk

uh, what? All write all my stories in the same format, and suddenly after years I get this?! I don't get it. I format my dialogue the same in all my stories. I am not even sure what i need to do to make it acceptable.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Can you show some examples from the story that has been rejected? Maybe we can point out the problem.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Scanning the first half page of Teach Me 01 ... looks fine.

 

[MelanieShaman]

I would, but i don't know where the issue is

 

[RejectReality]

Do a Find for quotation marks in your document and look for anywhere the punctuation is outside the quote marks. This seems to be a pet peeve of Laurel's, and is the most common reason for grammar rejections.

 

[MelanieShaman]

Do a Find for quotation marks in your document and look for anywhere the punctuation is outside the quote marks. This seems to be a pet peeve of Laurel's, and is the most common reason for grammar rejections.

I am going through and making sure all my punctuation is correct

 

[ElectricBlue]

SO, i just got this rejection reason.

• Please fix the formatting of your dialogue. The essay "How to Make Characters Talk" in our Writer's Resources section has more information on the formatting of dialogue if you have further questions: https://www.literotica.com/s/how-to-make-characters-talk

uh, what? All write all my stories in the same format, and suddenly after years I get this?! I don't get it. I format my dialogue the same in all my stories. I am not even sure what i need to do to make it acceptable.

You're ending dialogue with a full stop when it should be a comma.

"As usual." She muttered and shoved her phone back into her bag.

In this context, "She muttered" is being used as a speech tag, so the sentence should read:

"As usual," she muttered, shoving her phone back into her bag.

That was the first one I saw. You should go through your latest content, checking your dialogue punctuation. I suspect that's the issue.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Lots of published stories are far worse, note. Laurel can't read every story in detail, but when she sees something she doesn't like, she tells you.

--Annie

 

[RejectReality]

You're ending dialogue with a full stop when it should be a comma.



In this context, "She muttered" is being used as a speech tag, so the sentence should read:

"As usual," she muttered, shoving her phone back into her bag.

That was the first one I saw. You should go through your latest content, checking your dialogue punctuation. I suspect that's the issue.

This too. Only slightly less common than punctuation outside the quotes.

 

[BeechLeaf]

That error is pretty common in published stories. I believe it's compounded by the default behaviour of MS Word, until you find it and turn it off, of capitalizing the first word of a sentence. So there's not much visual difference between these two:

"As usual," she muttered
"As usual." she muttered

and it could be just a typo (symbols next to each other on the keyboard), not spotted because it's hard to see the difference in Lit font. But then Word thinks "Period. Must change next letter to capital." and you've got something that is visually much worse.

 

[ElectricBlue]

That error is pretty common in published stories. I believe it's compounded by the default behaviour of MS Word, until you find it and turn it off, of capitalizing the first word of a sentence. So there's not much visual difference between these two:

It's more likely poor knowledge of grammar and punctuation.

If you have the comma at the end of your dialogue sentence, Word doesn't capitalise the first word in the speech tag.

The OP just needs to understand speech tag punctuation, the difference between a speech tag and an action sentence, and they'll be fine. There's no need to find "explanations" in the tool being used, that's not the problem.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Well, I agree there must be some poor knowledge too. It's a combination. If Word does change the text, the writer should spot that and change it back. When the error occurs in a story, invariably it's not a once-off error, like a mistake you or I failed to notice in proof-reading, it's all through the dialogue, showing they don't know the correct way to do it.

 

[SmilingLez]

Do a Find for quotation marks in your document and look for anywhere the punctuation is outside the quote marks. This seems to be a pet peeve of Laurel's, and is the most common reason for grammar rejections.

Seems hypocritical to reject a story because of a very minor glitch, because tons of stories have spelling, grammar and formatting errors. Examples, nose used instead of knows, there v their, and my all-time favorite your v you're. YMMV (Y = Your not You're )

 

[BeechLeaf]

True, of course, but to catch those you'd have to do a proper proof-read of it, but here we perhaps have a problem that Laurel can spot in a quick eyeball of the early part of the text.

 

[Writer61]

SO, i just got this rejection reason.

• Please fix the formatting of your dialogue. The essay "How to Make Characters Talk" in our Writer's Resources section has more information on the formatting of dialogue if you have further questions: https://www.literotica.com/s/how-to-make-characters-talk

uh, what? All write all my stories in the same format, and suddenly after years I get this?! I don't get it. I format my dialogue the same in all my stories. I am not even sure what i need to do to make it acceptable.

I got a rejection for one of my first stories here. It's annoying.

A rejection that told you exactly where the issue(s) are would be helpful, but that is not going to change.

Run your story through a grammar checker.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Run your story through a grammar checker.

But make any changes yourself.

Using Grammarly and accepting its change suggestions is one of the common elements in all of the "Rejected for Suspected AI" threads. Use it with care.

Better to learn the basic rules of grammar and punctuation for yourself.

Did you figure out what your issue was, in the end? I'm assuming you did, and fixed it?

 

[PapaRomantic]

One of my two rejections was for this very same reason. Like you, I knew there were stories that others had submitted that had murdered grammar much more viciously than I did. But I did have a mistake. I fixed it and resubmitted, and it was accepted fine.

My other rejection? A 750 word story was rejected on the last day of publication for having too many words. That's when I learned that MS Word's way of counting words was different from Lit's system.

 

[Writer61]

But make any changes yourself.

Using Grammarly and accepting its change suggestions is one of the common elements in all of the "Rejected for Suspected AI" threads. Use it with care.

Yes, but the OP rejection was for improperly formatted dialogue. Using Grammmarly/similar for that does not generate a rejection.

Better to learn the basic rules of grammar and punctuation for yourself.

One can know the rules of grammar and still make a mistake.

Did you figure out what your issue was, in the end? I'm assuming you did, and fixed it?

Yes. It was a pain, but I found the errors and corrected them.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Seems hypocritical to reject a story because of a very minor glitch, because tons of stories have spelling, grammar and formatting errors. Examples, nose used instead of knows, there v their, and my all-time favorite your v you're. YMMV (Y = Your not You're )

vs. yore.

 

[anthrodisiac]

One of my two rejections was for this very same reason. Like you, I knew there were stories that others had submitted that had murdered grammar much more viciously than I did. But I did have a mistake. I fixed it and resubmitted, and it was accepted fine.

My other rejection? A 750 word story was rejected on the last day of publication for having too many words. That's when I learned that MS Word's way of counting words was different from Lit's system.

Yeah, I was going to submit my 750-word story for the contest, then someone (can't remember who, but thanks to that person!) mentioned that the word count for Lit would be different than Word of Google Doc, which I hadn't considered. Thank God I did, because my WC in Word was 753. You can copy/paste into the Story Text field, click the arrows in the upper-right, and the WC will be in the bottom-left corner.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

At long as Lit counts at least 750 words, it doesn't matter. Adding the blurb suggested, that below is a story of 750 words, is helpful to ensure the story is accepted even if Lit would deem the story to have under 750 words.

The only rejection I've had was for putting some song lyrics at the start of my story, and not formatting them nicely with break tags. Took me a few goes but once I figured it out and the two verses were spaced beautifully, the story was accepted.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

At long as Lit counts at least 750 words, it doesn't matter. Adding the blurb suggested, that below is a story of 750 words, is helpful to ensure the story is accepted even if Lit would deem the story to have under 750 words.

^^^ Unless ... vvv

Yeah, I was going to submit my 750-word story for the contest,