What is going on with new stories?

[hbcacouple]

I thought stories were edited before posting.
The first three "new" stories that caught my attention were clearly unedited. Bad grammar, wrong words, misspelled words.

 

[KeithD]

I thought stories were edited before posting.
The first three "new" stories that caught my attention were clearly unedited. Bad grammar, wrong words, misspelled words.

No, the site doesn't edit the stories. Authors can submit them without editing. If the submissions process sees a lot of grammar problems, it will rejected the story, but there are so many submissions that the single submissions editor can't do but scan the submissions.

 

[NotWise]

I thought stories were edited before posting.
The first three "new" stories that caught my attention were clearly unedited. Bad grammar, wrong words, misspelled words.

Editing is up to the author. The site will sometimes reject stories based on bad grammar or punctuation, but with the large number of stories being posted these days (roughly 150% of normal), the site doesn't have time to be the arbiter. If it's a special problem for you, then use the "report this story" button, and bring it to the administrator's attention.

 

[GroverLang]

Can’t understand

I can’t understand either how many stories get through that are so badly written.

I had my first story rejected, but that was over two years ago, for bad punctuation and I’ve read similar comments from other writers.

I‘m not to techie orientated but I understand there is an algorithm that picks up nasty words such as r**e but I doubt there is one to pick up punctuation and grammar. I understand the stories are only skipped through when submitted but that must be sufficient to get an idea of the writing. I thought the mantra was “if in doubt throw it out.”

 

[gordo12]

Well that was fkn weird. I was posting on another thread but the post ended up on this one???

Apologies!

POST REMOVED

 

[sally_sparrow]

I have had a story initially rejected so I could fix some grammar issues, but I have used an editor each time I've submitted. I don't know how unedited stories get through. Some of them are cringe worthy.

 

[SimonDoom]

I thought the mantra was “if in doubt throw it out.”

My sense is it's more like the opposite. Most stuff gets past the very limited proofreading that the Site owners can afford to do, so the standards sometimes seem arbitrary.

Many, many stories that get published have atrocious grammar, spelling, and form. I assume it's just a matter of the site owners having too little time to review everything carefully and even-handedly. But sometimes a problem will catch their eye and the author's perfectly reasonable response is,"Why me and not the others?"

 

[KeithD]

Maybe in the interest of giving broad access to those who wish to express themselves in stories, Laurel has a different threshold standard than some users would wish. We also get complaints of her being too stringent on grammar and punctuation issues, so she's hitting somewhere in the middle. I try not to get too concerned with other writers are doing here as long as my stories are getting through. What concern is it of mine that I would consider some other stories here technical trash (in my opinion. And I'm a credentialed editor, so I know a thing or two about that) as long as readers are finding me?

 

[lovecraft68]

That sucks, you should ask for your money back.

Oh, wait, you're reading for free in that case you get what you pay for.
Want professional editing/writing pay for it.

Or you can come here and trash people who are doing the best they can, and ruin their excitement of having published something because it isn't up to your standards

You'll have to excuse me if I've grown tired of vultures thinking not only should they get to peruse a half a million stories for free, but denigrate the people who supply the material if it isn't perfect

 

[SimonDoom]

Or you can come here and trash people who are doing the best they can, and ruin their excitement of having published something because it isn't up to your standards

You'll have to excuse me if I've grown tired of vultures thinking not only should they get to peruse a half a million stories for free, but denigrate the people who supply the material if it isn't perfect

What?

I don't think this fairly describes anything that anyone on this thread has written.

It's not "trashing people" to observe that many stories here have bad spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and flunk fairly elementary levels of editing and proofreading. That's a truism.

None of the remarks on this thread are directed at specific individuals, so there's no concern that making this completely true observation will hurt any particular person's feelings. Nobody here is being cruel.

I believe it's possible to be kind and supportive of aspiring authors while also supporting certain basic standards of writing. Doing so will ultimately help those who want to write better. I include myself in that group, and I'm personally grateful to anyone who points out errors of spelling, grammar, and punctuation in my stories, so I can do a better job next time. I've had some very interesting comments made to my stories about my choice of words.

I had a reader/commenter recently who said my use of the word "pungent" ruined the story for them. I didn't agree with it but it got me to thinking about the usage and looking up the word and its uses. I learned something even if I thought the reader wasn't quite right. I'm glad they wrote the comment.

 

[lovecraft68]

What?

I don't think this fairly describes anything that anyone on this thread has written.

It's not "trashing people" to observe that many stories here have bad spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and flunk fairly elementary levels of editing and proofreading. That's a truism.

None of the remarks on this thread are directed at specific individuals, so there's no concern that making this completely true observation will hurt any particular person's feelings. Nobody here is being cruel.

I believe it's possible to be kind and supportive of aspiring authors while also supporting certain basic standards of writing. Doing so will ultimately help those who want to write better. I include myself in that group, and I'm personally grateful to anyone who points out errors of spelling, grammar, and punctuation in my stories, so I can do a better job next time. I've had some very interesting comments made to my stories about my choice of words.

I had a reader/commenter recently who said my use of the word "pungent" ruined the story for them. I didn't agree with it but it got me to thinking about the usage and looking up the word and its uses. I learned something even if I thought the reader wasn't quite right. I'm glad they wrote the comment.

This is a feedback forum...did they write a story and look for feedback? No.
They came here with a "don't they edit around here" crack.

Once again, this is a free site full of people with various degrees of talent, experience, education etc as well as goals...do they want to improve, are they here to just share their dirty stories?

Although there are people who might be a little lazy or just don't care to double check their stories, there are some who English is a second language, there are some with impediments like dyslexia or reading learning disabilities and there are people who don't have much in the way of formal education.

In all of those examples perhaps these people are not lazy or sloppy, but doing the very best they can and they are proud of their efforts and excited to post something

Then they get "Oh, your grammar" from a bunch of freeloaders who have never written anything more than their last banality riddled tweet or FB post, but want to bash people's efforts.

So excuse me if I get sick of people griping about the free content. Do better yourself or pay for better.

If you don't agree with that attitude, that's fine, you don't have to. You want to consider "I thought they edited stories here" kind and supportive, feel free to do so.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm curious - this is from the OP's profile page:

We are clean cut and appear to be straight laced. Our friends would believe the things that we are interested in.

Wouldn't you use "wouldn't" in that context?

Or is this the same odd construction Americans use when they say, "I could care less," when they actually don't care at all? I'm in Australia, where we'd write, "Our friends wouldn't believe the things that we are interested in."

It's either a different word usage thing, or the world's oldest petard, I'm not sure.

Could one of you American grammarians sort this one out for me?

 

[GroverLang]

OP profile page correction

I see it’s been corrected half an hour ago. They read what you said, realised they’d missed out a word, and acted on it. It’s nice when people listen to you and also nice when they act on it. It also says something about the thought behind the OP’s original post. I wonder if they leave comments about improvement at the end of stories? I think they might as an incentive for the writer to improve.

I missed out a word in a recent story and am really annoyed, although it doesn’t seem to have bothered any readers by the stars coming in. The error is “But if he couldn’t, it wasn’t going to them.” Missed out the word “bother” and I find it so annoying.

I’ve just typed the sentence as it should be and it came up autocorrected as “it wasn’t going to burger them” which would have made the error more acceptable than missing out the word.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm curious - this is from the OP's profile page:


Wouldn't you use "wouldn't" in that context?

Or is this the same odd construction Americans use when they say, "I could care less," when they actually don't care at all? I'm in Australia, where we'd write, "Our friends wouldn't believe the things that we are interested in."

It's either a different word usage thing, or the world's oldest petard, I'm not sure.

Could one of you American grammarians sort this one out for me?

"I could care less" is nails on a chalkboard to me. Can't stand that phrase. Some Americans use it, but not all. It's right there with "irregardless."

 

[Emirus]

I leave comments on many stories and they are always, I hope, constructive. I certainly strive to make them so. No matter how bad the bad points are I always find something positive to say and I always look back to see if there has been any response. Many times I received a thank you from the writer.

One writer who recently asked for advice on this forum, and many don’t have the courage, actually took the trouble to send a pm thanking me for my advice. His thank you was short, to the point, and I really appreciated it.

 

[GroverLang]

"I could care less" is nails on a chalkboard to me. Can't stand that phrase. Some Americans use it, but not all. It's right there with "irregardless."

Myself and another writer used to check each other’s work and there where clashes, as you would expect, of phrases in English UK as against English US.

I once used “I’ll give it a miss,” which they couldn’t understand. I explained to an Englishman it means, for example, “I don’t think I’ll go the the party.”

It taught me a lesson which was never assume a reader in another country will understand what you’re talking about. It’s quite simple to understand but many writers don’t, or won’t, understand it. Particularly the ones who use abbreviations in stories.

Many writers will write as they speak which is fine with dialogue (subject to what I said in my last paragraph) but not fine with descriptive text. For example the horrible word “gotten” which, like aluminum, doesn’t exist is acceptable in dialogue but not otherwise.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I'm curious - this is from the OP's profile page:


Wouldn't you use "wouldn't" in that context?

Or is this the same odd construction Americans use when they say, "I could care less," when they actually don't care at all? I'm in Australia, where we'd write, "Our friends wouldn't believe the things that we are interested in."

It's either a different word usage thing, or the world's oldest petard, I'm not sure.

Could one of you American grammarians sort this one out for me?

I'm no grammarian, but I think "could care less" is an example of a phrase that's so often used that people don't think about the words in it. I think the "n't" in "couldn't" disappears a bit in pronunciation, and it's been misheard and mis-learned for generations. It might be an American bad habit, but it's not good American grammar, and it drives some of us nuts.

Naturally, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I've noticed there are other phrases that suffer similarly. The whole phrase almost becomes a word itself, with nobody paying attention to its component parts.

 

[GroverLang]

It’s sac not sack!

I'm no grammarian, but I think "could care less" is an example of a phrase that's so often used that people don't think about the words in it. I think the "n't" in "couldn't" disappears a bit in pronunciation, and it's been misheard and mis-learned for generations. It might be an American bad habit, but it's not good American grammar, and it drives some of us nuts.

Naturally, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I've noticed there are other phrases that suffer similarly. The whole phrase almost becomes a word itself, with nobody paying attention to its component parts.

Another popular one with Americans is to describe the part of a man’s body containing his testicles as a “sack” whereas the correct word is “sac.”

To balance it out I would say there are writers of other nationalities who appear to have never used a dictionary. Or even Google.

 

[NotWise]

I'm no grammarian, but I think "could care less" is an example of a phrase that's so often used that people don't think about the words in it. I think the "n't" in "couldn't" disappears a bit in pronunciation, and it's been misheard and mis-learned for generations. It might be an American bad habit, but it's not good American grammar, and it drives some of us nuts.

It's idiom. It has nothing to do with grammar.

Personally, I say "I couldn't care less," and I emphasize the "n't." If you're going to write that, then write it the way you want.

 

[ElectricBlue]

"I could care less" is nails on a chalkboard to me. Can't stand that phrase. Some Americans use it, but not all. It's right there with "irregardless."

So "could care less" is a weird usage quirk then. Good to know. I hear it and see it written a lot, and it's always been completely illogical to me - but one of those usages, by the sound of it, that will now be perpetuated because entire generations have heard it and now think it right.

I see it’s been corrected half an hour ago. They read what you said, realised they’d missed out a word, and acted on it. It’s nice when people listen to you and also nice when they act on it.

Lol. Still, fourteen years on, it's never too late to stand corrected.

Perhaps they weren't as outré as they thought they were and their friends did know all along - they might have to change it back .

 

[ElectricBlue]

Many writers will write as they speak which is fine with dialogue (subject to what I said in my last paragraph) but not fine with descriptive text. For example the horrible word “gotten” which, like aluminum, doesn’t exist is acceptable in dialogue but not otherwise.

That's odd, because I've got aluminium saucepans and we've got four aluminium smelters here in Australia producing two million tons a year.

https://aluminium.org.au/australian-industry/industry-description/australian-aluminium/

Just keep repeating, "America is not the whole world" and eventually you might understand why the world looking in continues to find Americans curious and strange.

I'm with you on "gotten" though. It's a misbegotten abomination of a usage .

 

[Sonatatre]

As someone who posts stories with very little editing I would like to apologize to all readers. I know my stories got a lot of problems with them when it comes to grammar and spelling mistakes, but I feel they can still have some value.


Sincerely

Sonatatre

 

[LWulf]

I'm no grammarian, but I think "could care less" is an example of a phrase that's so often used that people don't think about the words in it. I think the "n't" in "couldn't" disappears a bit in pronunciation, and it's been misheard and mis-learned for generations. It might be an American bad habit, but it's not good American grammar, and it drives some of us nuts.

The British way is "I couldn't care less,while the American phrase is "I could care less."
It started in Britain in about 1860, in America, the alternate form started in the 1940's.

Both make sense to me.

The alternate form appears to mean something rather opposed to what it purports to mean. The person who says “I could care less” is, on the face of it, stating “Yes, it would be possible for me to care less deeply about this matter than I do, and therefore I am betraying some unspecified degree of care.” But if you are the kind of person who cries out against this abomination we must warn you that people who go through life expecting informal variant idioms in English to behave logically are setting themselves up for a lifetime of hurt.

I personally prefer the British form, but the alternate form doesn't bother me.

 

[SimonDoom]

The British way is "I couldn't care less,while the American phrase is "I could care less."
It started in Britain in about 1860, in America, the alternate form started in the 1940's.

Both make sense to me.



I personally prefer the British form, but the alternate form doesn't bother me.

No, no, no.

"I could care less" is a common phrase in America. True. But it's not correct to say it's THE American way to say it. I'm American and I've always hated this phrase and so have many other Americans. It makes no logical sense. I would say "I couldn't care less" because that's the logical way to express the idea that you care so little about something that you could not care less about it than you do. "I could care less" means absolutely nothing at all.

What NotWise said is correct: it's a common American idiom. When you say it, people know what you mean. But it still bugs some of us, and some of us say "I couldn't care less" instead.

 

[KeithD]

"I could care less" is just incorrect, albeit popular--like "irregardless" isn't a word, but that doesn't stop people from using it or from forcing it into the dictionary, if only to be identified as incorrect usage.

There's no reason not to correct it in the narration or to possibly use it in dialogue to reveal something about the character.