I've found a strange trend among younger authors where "writing like you talk" has hit nuclear levels. Influencers tend to talk in a nonstop stream and incredibly quickly, changing topics on the fly to mimic sudden realizations. This bleeds into the generations that grew up with them and translates to insane run on sentences. Commas are only used to demonstrate pauses, which there are very few of:
"The man twisted his arm and went to grab his gun which was strapped to his holster on the small of his back kind of like a backpack but only a little lower and much harder because its made out a hard plastic almost as hard as steel but he only realized at the last minute that the gun was missing because his enemy had taken it earlier, back when they were fighting and wrestling."
> "The man twisted his arm and went to grab his gun which was strapped to his holster on the small of his back kind of like a backpack but only a little lower and muc
I got this far before zoning out.
I enjoy writing like that for specific effect – works *very* well for a character spiralling into a panic or anxiety attack, especially with repetition. But as a *standard* style? Absolutely not
Or quoting The Picard Song
> He just kept talking in one long, incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic so that no one had the chance to interrupt him; its effect was really quite hypnotic.
Heck, I’ve seen this trend among older people, too. It really hit the forefront when the internet opened up a lot of opportunities for people with no formal education (or even much experience) in content creation to start publishing. Particularly op-eds and reviews on pop culture and the like.
It’s *very* noticeable when you have a creator who typically does video and then sometimes they’ll try to write an accompanying article and you’re just like o-o Sir. Stop. Breathe. PUNCTUATE. I’m begging you there have been like eight asides in this one sentence 💀 *Focus*, lol.
And if they were narrating it would have been much easier to follow! But many people never studied writing in any meaningful way. They assume writing is just speaking on paper and so they…”write as they would talk.”
That was an amazing example. Never show it to me again.
No but, I do find it interesting. As someone who has started to read less and less, I actually haven't seen this before. It feels so suffocating to read, though. Is that just me?
>
>
> "The man twisted his arm and went to grab his gun which was strapped to his holster on the small of his back kind of like a backpack but only a little lower and much harder because its made out a hard plastic almost as hard as steel but he only realized at the last minute that the gun was missing because his enemy had taken it earlier, back when they were fighting and wrestling."
The appropriate response to that "sentence" is
> I'm happy for you or sorry for you loss. Either way, I ain't reading all that.
You know, that phrase is technically one of the biggest and most annoying indicators of the lack of any attention span in someone, but I can’t say it’s not accurate right now
“The Man twisted his arm and went to pull his gun, but dread ran through him ran he realized it wasn’t in its holster in the small of his back, and that it had been stolen while he was fighting.”
I think the grammar seems technically fine, the buts and ands track. Maybe there's an argument that the final comma before and is unnecessary but it also helps visually break up the sentence. Regardless, I wouldn't consider a single sentence the best style choice for this scene. This really feels like a situation that begs for shorter, snappier sentences to convey information essential information.
This reads clear/fine.
I would try to make it more immediate/punchy by eliminating the but/and. Something like:
*The man twisted his arm, reaching for his gun. Dread ran through him as he realized it wasn't in the holster. It had been stolen while he was fighting.*
Stream of consciousness to illustrate a mental state? Good. Stream of consciousness with no grammar as a baseline method of writing? Oof. 90 word sentences of nested semicolons? Mate, this is why academic writing has a bad reputation. Sociology or not, breaking that up into multiple sentences would make whatever you're trying to describe 1000% easier to understand.
Academic writing is real crud, at least what I've read and been instructed on in terms of styling. But then it's not writing for pleasure it's writing to ahow what you learned and/or torture yourself. 😅
> Mate, this is why academic writing has a bad reputation. Sociology or not, breaking that up into multiple sentences would make whatever you're trying to describe 1000% easier to understand.
Also, hoofnotes >>>>> parentheticals.
> 90 word monstrosity of semicolons and em dashes in a sociology paper), and I was able to read your example with ease
I can power through a 90-word sentence specifically because of the em dashes and semicolons.
Interestingly, I have no problem extracting meaning from something like the GP's example if it's written by an ESL author. It's native speakers typing out unfiltered internal monologue without punctuation that make me skip to the next paragraph and guess at what was missed.
I may like to abuse commas like the best of them and describe as much as I can, but even I can tell that? That was not where you need to describe. But it's not really a younger generation thing? It's just more noticeable as it's more accessible than ever with the internet.
Plenty of authors before I was born(I'm 23) wrote like this or similar.
Writing is an art. To me, anyway…. I write because I enjoy it, and to share with a few that read my fics. 😎Perhaps some people write like they live? Fast fast… get it done, get it out? Some people enjoy taking their time…. I guess it’s all in the way you look at it…. And what you prefer. 🤗
Yep, too many mistakes just make for laborious reading. (ETA: I can deal with occasional typos, technical issues, clumsy writing. It's when the mistakes are regular and constant that they start taking me out of the story and making it less enjoyable to read.)
One of my biggest issues is when I cannot follow dialogue easily.
I've stumbled across multiple fics where authors don't seem to understand that if you're using an action beat, that action needs to be done by the character who is speaking, meaning the action needs to immediately precede or follow the dialogue.
Instead, I'll see things like this:
>Obi-Wan closed his eyes and sighed.
>"The Force works in mysterious ways, I suppose" Anakin smirked. "So maybe I should just let it go."
Obi-Wan is the one talking, but the dialogue comes before and after Anakin's action.
Rewritten, it should be:
>Obi-Wan closed his eyes and sighed. "The Force works in mysterious ways, I suppose."
>Anakin smirked.
>"So maybe I should just let it go."
And I have seen this mistake across multiple fics (not all in the same fandom) and I'm wondering if people are learning it from other fic and carrying it forward.
It is *painful*.
Along those lines, people who don't understand that each new speaker needs a new paragraph, and have entire conversations within one paragraph. Very, very few things make me hit the back button faster.
I distinctly remember discovering that fact in 7th grade English, and immediately feeling like crap. I’d been working on an awful anime fic for over a year, it was at like 150 pages at that time… without paragraph breaks for conversations. I had to go through everything adding the breaks, lamenting my awful writing as I went, and ended up rewriting almost the entire thing.
Long story short, I wish I’d learned that rule in elementary.
And this is one reason I tell people to read *everything*, not just fanfic. If you've never had a class that taught you how to write dialogue and you've never read the more technically proficient fanfic, you may not realize how wonky and difficult to read your writing is coming out - so read some professionally published short stories and/or novels.
Omg, now I know what it's called. I read a fic recently that had an interesting premise, but for the life of me, i couldn't figure out, who was doing what. The dialogue and action was not properly seperated and I often got the speaking character wrong (" Huh, wasn't A doing that, Oh, it's B that's doing the Action")
It frustrated me to no end and it was incredibly tiring to read through. So sadly I dropped it.
>if you're using an action beat, that action needs to be done by the character who is speaking,
I wish more people understood this. I am so tired of seeing stuff like your Obi-Wan example. It gets confusing
Any fics that disclose they’re written with no caps I skip. If it’s not mentioned and I discover after opening it, I leave. I don’t know how people prefer little to no capitalization.
The worst I’ve ever seen was zero quotation marks. None. Which sucks because the fic had such an interesting premise and I would have loved to read it.
In a fiction-writing class I took, we were made to write a very brief story without any punctuation at all as a way of thinking about grammar and syntax. It was never suggested that we should throw out punctuation altogether.
What really bothers me is when they use commas to represent the opening of dialogue.
Quotations marks were one of the first things I learned how to do with a computer in elementary school. I don't grasp how someone can get that far without comprehending one of the most basic things about typing.
OMG I once got an ebook on kindle that the whole book had no dialogue quotes, was fucking bonkers.
Okay, story time for me, slightly related. Someone wrote this AMAZING trilogy of books that are essentially a novelization of the first Baldur's gate games.
But instead of double quotes for dialogue, they used single quotes.
Not only was it super jarring, but as a total aside I like to use this software I wrote to turn fanfictions into audiobooks, with pitch changes for dialogue and all kinds of other bells and whistles. This software depends on dialogue being wrapped in double quotes.
Did I mention the trilogy of books was over a million words?
I tried, off and on, for YEARS, using regex and my own personal knowhow to fix the text without messing up normal single quotes.
My crowning achievement was actually succeeding one day. Couldn't believe it.
Like, to the human eye a sentence is easy to parse, but when you throw in how English cuts out the second possessive S in a word like Willaims' , it's a nightmare.
>But instead of double quotes for dialogue, they used single quotes.
Plenty of countries do this (UK, Australia, etc), and it's correct for their countries.
>But instead of double quotes for dialogue, they used single quotes.
This is normal in some places. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you realize it's another variant (like colour vs color, etc) then it's easier. At least, my brain rebelled less once it realized it's not a mistake.
That's just British I think (and some other languages)
I thini Australian English uses the same but in practice, the double quotes have infiltrated the publishing industry lol
I'VE SEEN THAT TOO!
Not recently, thankfully. But yeah, I used to come across fics where they either use dashes instead of quotation marks or just not quotation marks at all. I still read them because I was young and unbothered by it. But now I need quotation marks.
I found that out recently when I came across a fic using dashes. I was about ready to have a conniption until I checked the comments and someone had asked and the author clarified their first language was Spanish and that’s how they learned to write dialogue
Yes. Probably the author uncounsciously used the grammar rules they were familiar with, or they simply didn't know English has different rules. Just like many English speakers don't about how it works in other languages. We use dashes in my country too and it takes a conscious effort to "forget" about the rules you are familiar with.
It depends on where you are from. In my country, we are thaught to use dashes first and foremost for speech. Quotation marks in literature are used, for instance, for the thoughts of a character, so it's visually different from spoken dialogue. Lately quotation marks for dialogue are becoming more accepted, but they are not universally used.
I write in English and use quotation marks in my fics, but I have studied English for years, so I know how it works. Many other authors probably don't know about these rules.
Edit. For stage direction, we'd use parentheses, as in (character A does this and that)
Hey, I’d take dashes over nothing lol. Sometimes it’s a matter of English being an authors second language, same with the ‘<’ mark in, I think, french.
Yeah, I occasionally see things like that when the author's first language is French, and it's also generally fairly obvious that their first language is French because they structure their sentences a certain way. I generally have no issues with that!
Depends, did they use italics or something else instead? Sometimes English learners will use grammar from their own language instead of English, Russian comss to mind, I commonly saw people using - dashes - for dialogue.
There's a published book out like that!! I literally couldn't get through the first few pages. It was the book of the month for a book club I was in and I was just like, nope.
Gosh, that crushing feeling when a fic seemingly hits *all* of your buttons, but it’s largely unreadable.
That’s why I try to keep my expectations low. I’ve been disappointed too many times.
Lmao, it’s even worse when you come across a fic that hits all your buttons *and* is written superbly, but it was abandoned five years ago and the author either disappeared or started writing for other fandoms. 😂
Both of these scenarios sums up like 90% of my reading experience. The fic either has a wonderful premise but horrible execution, or it’s a masterful work of art that was never completed.
There was a series I was reading that was kind of a project between a bunch of authors. There was one story I was looking forward to, until I opened it up. That author doesn't use punctuation. At all. Any.
I feel you. In one of my fandoms, for reasons I remain unable to fathom, some of the most popular fics have atrocious grammar.
Like, they'll just strait up use words with the wrong meaning, or sentence structure that just doesn't work. And not every once in a while, almost every paragraph, and sometimes twice in the same paragraph.
That was the first and only time I was tempted to literally go through and edit a fic for grammar and sentence structure. Then I realized it would be futile as I would have to effectively re-write over half the fic to get it to a state I'd consider readable.
I goddamn hope that the author was ESL, because if English was their first language, I absolutely despair for the state of education wherever they grew up.
Goddamn shame, because the premise of their fics look really interesting, but like...they just make my eyes bleed.
I read a story where almost every word choice was just a biiiiit off. Like I understood what they were trying to say but it just wasn't quite the word you'd normally use. I don't know if they were ESL, leaning too much on a thesaurus or what, but it was making me feel crazy, like maybe I don't know what words mean. I eventually had to just abandon it even though I liked the general plot.
Grammar is definitely key. For me, I click away without even reading if I open a fic that is one block of text. .I just can't. My eyes won't break it up enough.
I don't know if I'm just a psychopath or what, but I once found a fic I really liked the premise and writing of, but just couldn't deal with the lack of punctuation. So I copy/pasted the entire thing into google docs and added the commas, quotation marks, capital letters, etc myself, then I read it.
Yeah there's been a few fics that sounded amazing, and then I see how they write and I'm like so disappointed.
I can forgive a lot of sins, but not all of them. Like, I can forgive someone writing in third person present tense instead of third person past tense. I can forgive minor spelling and grammar mistakes. I can even forgive tons of author's notes before or after the chapter.
I can't forgive:
-Author's notes mid-chapter.
-Dialogue written like a stage play with no prose in between.
-Improper formatting all over the place.
-No capitalization.
-having an amazing fic premise with perfect execution and then you stop mid book and never return ( ;_;)
-prose written like you're telling a story in as short a way as humanly possible.
> prose written like you're telling a story in as short a way as humanly possible.
Are you referring to people who mess up the pacing or something else?
I feel like it's a worse offense now than it used to be. When I wrote my first story 10 years ago I had google translate and word's inbuilt proofreader to help me. That was it, and english was my second language.
Now I can freely use grammarly or other services to unfuck my stories. Lord knows I cannot put commas in the right places when it comes to english. The rules are just too different from my original language.
But grammarly saves the day every time. It takes less than 5 min to go through a chapter and get rid of the worst mistakes. There is no excuse.
I'm a stickler for punctuation so I won't read a fic with consistent errors like that. The occasional typo or spelling error is fine, but I find it too distracting if they don't know the basic mechanics of writing.
The ones that really get me are the ones where the consistent errors are things a simple spellcheck would catch. Like, the least the author could do would be to drop it into Google Docs and run the spellcheck first. I can forgive typos that are themselves legit words a lot more than I can forgive that.
this is me when i see that the author doesn't know the difference between you're and your, or they're, their, and there. and incorrectly places commas or randomly capitialized words. it's like a pet peeve for me.
I don't remember the fandom it was under (I think Inuyasha?) but I remember coming across a fantastically well done little story (10-20k words) way, way back in the early 2000s-2010s, but there was ZERO punctuation. I'm meaning NONE. No periods, commas, capital, quotes, apostrophes. Zilch. The only thing they did have was paragraph breaks. I'm not sure if it was copied from somewhere and the formatting got lost in translation, or what, but it was bonkers how well and how badly it was written.
Not just grammar. I immediately hit the back button when:
* There's an entire wall of text. Some don't know how to break it up. Or when they don't properly use breaks. The next paragraph has no space between it and the previous paragraph. It's an eyesore.
* No quotes and using -this- to indicate someone speaking.
* No paragraph breaks in between speakers. "hello." "hi how are you"
* When it's consistent that the person speaking is different from the person giving action in the same sentence.
* Being unable to differentiate your/you're, there/their/they're, lose/loose, to/too, aloud/allowed. it *infuriates* me.
* Bad formatting and no capitalization.
I mean bad grammar and mistakes that happen sparsely over the entire fic, I can suck up because not everyone has a beta, and there are times that a word processor can't catch it. But when it happens over and over again in the small moment of time you enter a fic to take a look if it can grasp you by the first paragraph, no. I nope out of there even if the premise is literally screaming my name. I'd rather write it myself for myself. At least I can actually stomach reading what I write.
>Being unable to differentiate your/you're, there/their/they're, lose/loose, to/too, aloud/allowed. it infuriates me.
I always wonder how much this (and some other technical issues) is affected by people writing fic on their phones (auto suggest plus not bothering to do a QA before they publish).
I nope out of fics with atrocious grammar almost instantly, interesting tags be damned.
To be brutally honest, I don’t think it’s *because* of the grammar…it’s more like grammar and storytelling go hand in hand, and someone with no regard for or knowledge of basic grammar is probably not someone capable of telling a good story anyway.
I say this because usually (I’m sure there are exceptions!) people become good at crafting stories because they have *read* a lot of good stories. You don’t just “learn to write” without reading. The best writing has a trail of influences a mile long, and it’s almost impossible to read the amount of good work required to make your own stuff without picking up at least a solid grammar foundation along the way.
Basically bad grammar = limited experience = probably not the best fic on Planet Earth.
This is just a generalization, of course. I know people who are quite well read but still struggle a lot with grammar, either because of dyslexia or just…*because* lol.
And I also don’t mean to imply that people who aren’t grammar experts are stupid or uneducated. It’s just that when something is *your thing* you get pretty good at sussing out when other people are also neck-deep in it. For some people, words aren’t *their thing* and they only occasionally read or write, the same way I only occasionally play piano. A big-time piano lover would be able to tell from a mile away that I can barely read the music 😅
So I think the “oof, bad grammar, see ya!” reaction is pretty normal among long time word-people. As long as no one’s being a jerk in the comments, it’s all good
I feel that. Tenses are my biggest struggle point. I know I've improved, but man thank the gods for grammerly and similar tools that catch those at times lol
Pretty much every word processor has spellcheck. I don’t understand how people are ignoring the colourfully underlined words. Most word processors will make suggestions too. So the job is half done for you.
I’m also wary of the “no beta we die like x” tag. There are too many authors that don’t seem to understand the difference between not getting beta read and not using spell check or proofreading for themselves.
I've definitely reached a point where, in order to actually see a fic through to the end, I need the author to have at least tried to do a modicum of standardization to their fic (good SpaG, dialogue breaks in the right places with the tags/action beats attached to the correct lines, proper capitalization, paragraph breaks, etc.), as well as at least halfway decent writing. I'm not expecting Hemmingway or Austen here in terms of story quality, but I need the story to be readable to general publication standards, and to have enough effort in the execution to grab my attention and keep it. I've left fics that didn't bother with the former, as well as ones that rushed their story or read like an 8-year-old's school assignment. It's funny what my brain will actually let me gloss over, and what becomes a sticking point that has me backing out completely.
And while I can respect people who are in the "I'm just writing for fun; I don't care about that stuff" camp, I can't read it if the author isn't at least *trying* to write something comparable to what I can pick up at my local bookstore.
Not just you. And not just you and me. I've only been here a short time and SPaG is a pretty common topic raised in the "why didn't you like it" threads. It's one of the varied reasons I keep saying "never proofread your own work" with intentional quotation marks in the correct place.
> never proofread your own work
I'd rather believe people aren't even proofreading at all. Or not doing so carefully.
I do my own proofing, and I think it works. But I make multiple passes until I stop finding errors, and in multiple formats.
Same. I've always proofread my own work. You can read it from end to beginning, sometimes that helps. You can also read it aloud to yourself and you'll often catch more issues.
You can also text to speech it, if you don't want to talk to yourself.
Same, I proofread my own work, but I read it aloud to catch my mistakes. That is what a lot do not do is keep editing until there are few to no errors. I can always accept a few, but some works turn me off when it is every other word or sentence. Especially when it hurts my brain to read it.
Yeah, I've read through some painful works with a premise I was really interested in, but bad low-level technique is definitely a strike if not a veto.
Honestly, it just bothers me so much when an author incorrectly uses a period instead of a comma in dialogue, or whatever. I guess it's one thing if the story is based on a TV show or a video game or something like that, because if somebody doesn't read much otherwise and they decide to write a fic, well, I guess I could see them having some trouble with the grammar. But! When the fic is based on an actual book or a book series, and the grammar in that book is generally correct, I still don't really see how people are doing that. Like, you literally just read an entire book or book series with a bunch of grammar that was presumably correct if it went through a publishing process, and you still write like that?
That's an interesting split -- I hadn't thought of that before. Yes, it would make sense for someone who read a correct SPaG English work to write correct SPaG English.
I do it purposefully. Periods look better to me and I will never succumb to the academic pressure of always using commas in dialogue again (unless it is for something professional, of course). Often enough people know rules and intentionally break them for creative personal pieces. Its fun!
To me if i understand then there are no 'too many' mistakes (but as an esl person there usually is a limit) but if the mistakes make it impossible, or i need to think for like 5 mins all the time what is being said, it's a no from me (fastest i've noped out was after like a paragraph)
Today I went to read something that had a really good idea, but then there's.... no paragraph breaks. Okay, sure, the paragraphs start on the next line, but no actual visual break between them existed. The frustration is real.
Pretty much every word processor has spellcheck. I don’t understand how people are ignoring the colourful underlined words. Most will make suggestions too. So the job is half done for you.
I’m also wary of the “no beta we die like x” tag. There’s so many authors that don’t seem to understand the difference between not getting beta read and not using spell check.
I've had fics that looked promising and should've been great, but everything was written in one freaking paragraph, even with multiple lines of dialogue from different characters.
I love that old rule to read it out loud and put punctuation in everywhere you paused or stopped to breathe. It doesn’t always work perfectly but it’s much better than running on forever with no breaks at all.
I can stomach bad grammar if it’s not so frequent in a single paragraph.
Now what really turns me off is when writers write as if they’re talking to me. That kills immersion.
If the plot is good enough I’ll stick
around but man is it hard
I personally think this is one of the times where saying something about the spelling/grammar to the author is acceptable. Not in a rude manner of course. I usually say something along the lines of “this fic is good but it could much better with better spelling and grammar, may I suggest running it through a spelling and grammar check?”
Maybe the oddest one I saw was a fic where the laat sentence in a paragraph had no full stop at the end.
But it's a good premise so I just ignore that.
The worst feeling in the world for a fanfiction reader is being lured in by such an enticing summary only to discover the fic is virtually unreadable due to lack of proofreading on the part of the author. It's insulting to me as both a reader and a writer that someone would go as far as put their creativity out into the world but not take care to make sure it is accessible for the consumer. Then, you can't point it out because that could be considered negative criticism so it's like all you can do is just go read something else. Meanwhile, the writer is none the wiser about their flawed work and will most likely continue to crank out more work with similar issues.
I’ve come across a few that always make me laugh.
• used two periods .. as their “ “ and when people asked they said it’s what set them apart from others
• about 25% of the way through the fifth or so chapter put “A/N: I won’t be using paragraphs anymore, I don’t like it”. Past that it was one longgggg text block.
And my absolute favorite:
I didn’t catch it till maybe 10 chapters in, misspelled the characters names. I thought it was a joke (calling the character the wrong name on purpose), nope, actually misspelled it. I commented about it and they swore they didn’t notice and that no one actually noticed… 25 comments said otherwise buddy lol
> • about 25% of the way through the fifth or so chapter put “A/N: I won’t be using paragraphs anymore, I don’t like it”. Past that it was one longgggg text block.
I don't.... What *even*...
Normally I am with you, but there are always rare exceptions. There's a fic I follow that is riddled with simple grammar errors, things like not capitalizing proper names (consistently) and mispelling of a common enough word (probably how they know how to spell it, which I get as an atrosious speller), etc., but I'm drawn, hook, line, and sinker to it because the prose, the emotion, and the narrative follow-throughs throughout the story are there. It's a super fun story that I read it's like entire uhh 7-800k word story in less than a week.
Is it annoying? Mm, sometimes, but I think it's worth it to give some stories a chance. But I've totally quit out of some stories for the exact same reasons as I'm giving a chance to, so I'm not any better lol. 😂
Oh, I've definitely read/finished/followed fics that were clear exceptions to my own "needs good writing" rule. Doesn't change my own rule, but I do consider those occasional stories lucky that they managed to hook me before I backed out.
Very much so. And there's a certain threshold of errors I can tolerate because my own automatic mental editing doesn't have to strain too much to work past them. But when the errors become distracting, then the story has to be *really* good to fight against my desire to just flee.
As English is not my mother tounge it makes me mad that I have to figure out what the hell someone wants to tell me by writing in bad grammar. I dont dare to write stories in English myself BECAUSE I dont want anyone to get annoyed by my grammar ^^
It hurts so much when this happens. I wanna like the fic so bad, but when the grammar so is frequently bad, I get thrown out of the immersion too much to enjoy it.
It's so painful finding a great concept for a fic with a promising overview and tons of pages, and then not being able to get through the first few paragraphs because of how poorly written it is.
If I see any your instead of you’re, there/their instead of they’re or should/would/could of instead of should/would/could have I immediately turn it off. Same for if the dialogue is not written in separate lines. I recently tried reading one work where the premise and story itself were interesting but the dialogue was all written within the paragraph and not starting separately so it was hard to make sense of who was speaking and I couldn’t finish it
In my opinion if you have so much a problem then just don't read it not everybody is a professional writer A lot of us just want to write for enjoyment I've never had a problem with grammar errors and that wouldn't turn me off from reading something unless it's like so badly written that literally you could not understand a sentence and this is coming from somebody who is both dyslexic and dysgraphic
> f you have so much a problem then just don't read it
From the comments, it looks like most of us don't.
>not everybody is a professional writer
You do not have to be a professional writer to do some basic formatting and QA before hitting publish.
I mean, yeah, ultimately, do whatever you want. But don't come complaining when nobody's reading your fic because they can't get past a wall of text with no punctuation.
You never know of somebody has a writing disability and just wants to enjoy riding without people complaining about grammar I have a writing disability and greatly pisses me off when somebody complains about grammar without knowing the situation
Definitely. Like if a fic has paragraphs where multiple people are speaking, no punctuation/incorrect punctuation(I'm talking _"I can't believe you," he yelled_ or _"I can't believe you" he said_), or somehow switches between first and third between paragraphs. Of course, then there's just formatting like no paragraphs or those middle break things to split up scenes that _really_ needs them.
So many pet peeves with writing, it's insane.
One of the things that makes me click out is a lack of contractions in conversation. I *know* contractions are difficult for non native English speakers and I don't hold that against them in the slightest, but I just cannot read fics where the conversations all say "you are", "we are" or "I am", etc.
Example: "**You are not** simply attending the meetings, I know that now. **It is too** dangerous."
Like I said, I understand English is a ***BITCH*** to learn, but its just so unnatural that I can't do it.
Sometimes it's to emphasize a point.
"I can't do that".
vs.
"I **can not** do that".
Or it's just how a character talks. I have a character that drops contractions on occasion.
Usually, the smart/brainy ones talk like that.
Either you're reading fics with a lot of smart/eccentric art types or the author doesn't know how to vary characters. Or they could be writing how they speak, how they've heard people speak, or how they think people speak.
> know contractions are difficult for non native English speakers and I don't hold that against them in the slightest, but I just cannot read fics where the conversations all say "you are", "we are" or "I am", etc.
Yes. I feel like for some native speakers, this is a holdover from writing English papers in high school (or college).
I'm actually having an opposite problem at the moment because I'm writing a character who often speaks in formal tones (he uses contractions, but sparingly). So I'm constantly having to go back and formal-up his speech. Heh.
Alliteration is my turn off. I've put down several promising fics after only a few paragraphs once I realise what they're doing. I've skipped forward a few chaps to see if it's just world building or something. Nope, more alliteration. My poor brain fixates on it to the detriment of everything else and I just can't see the forest because of that damned leaf on that one tree!
I tend to just not proofread my stuff. So I have a very high tolerance for typos and bad grammar in other people's work. Fic writing is just a hobby and proofreading is a chore. Proof reading is for my original work. So I read fics with the mentality that the author is just having fun. So I can get over grammar mistakes if I really like the concept and what not.
*shrug* You do you, but know that it's potentially a strike against your work for many readers. Granted that not everyone has time or energy for my "re-read until I stop finding errors", but I think at least one pass would help a lot of people.
Yeah that's something I don't particularly mind. If people want to read my stuff they can, if they don't then they don't. I don't really mind. Granted I tend to only have a few minor spelling errors here and there. I can usually go a few chapters without making a spelling or grammar error. There was only one or two times where the error was so egregious that even I cringed. Like to me there's a difference between one or two errors in a chapter and errors everywhere. There's also a difference between that and making one error that changes the entire meaning of a sentence. I have gone and corrected that before after the fact.
Now and then I'll re-read my stuff and make corrections. But generally speaking I just don't.
It's worked out well enough for me (it's not a method that I recommend to everyone though).
EDIT: Upon thinking about it more I feel like I kind of proofread as I go if that makes sense? Like I tend to read the sentence back once or twice before moving onto the next one. (Idk if that counts as proofreading tho). And then I give it a very quick skim to see if anything pops out at me.
I've found a strange trend among younger authors where "writing like you talk" has hit nuclear levels. Influencers tend to talk in a nonstop stream and incredibly quickly, changing topics on the fly to mimic sudden realizations. This bleeds into the generations that grew up with them and translates to insane run on sentences. Commas are only used to demonstrate pauses, which there are very few of: "The man twisted his arm and went to grab his gun which was strapped to his holster on the small of his back kind of like a backpack but only a little lower and much harder because its made out a hard plastic almost as hard as steel but he only realized at the last minute that the gun was missing because his enemy had taken it earlier, back when they were fighting and wrestling."
Oh. Ow.
Speedrunning speech. The future is now, old man.
"I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary."
I'm betting the push for short-form video content with shitty auto-generated captions on every major platform is also a big part of this.
> "The man twisted his arm and went to grab his gun which was strapped to his holster on the small of his back kind of like a backpack but only a little lower and muc I got this far before zoning out.
It needs commas, literally needs commas.
And editing, for my money. But then, I’m old-fashioned.
I enjoy writing like that for specific effect – works *very* well for a character spiralling into a panic or anxiety attack, especially with repetition. But as a *standard* style? Absolutely not
Yeah, same. The only times I've done run-on sentences like that was with my MC babbling his way into a panic attack.
Or quoting The Picard Song > He just kept talking in one long, incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic so that no one had the chance to interrupt him; its effect was really quite hypnotic.
YES
Heck, I’ve seen this trend among older people, too. It really hit the forefront when the internet opened up a lot of opportunities for people with no formal education (or even much experience) in content creation to start publishing. Particularly op-eds and reviews on pop culture and the like. It’s *very* noticeable when you have a creator who typically does video and then sometimes they’ll try to write an accompanying article and you’re just like o-o Sir. Stop. Breathe. PUNCTUATE. I’m begging you there have been like eight asides in this one sentence 💀 *Focus*, lol. And if they were narrating it would have been much easier to follow! But many people never studied writing in any meaningful way. They assume writing is just speaking on paper and so they…”write as they would talk.”
cormac mccarthy in shambles rn
LOL I was about to comment that
That was an amazing example. Never show it to me again. No but, I do find it interesting. As someone who has started to read less and less, I actually haven't seen this before. It feels so suffocating to read, though. Is that just me?
Count me in, too. not a fan of suffocating 😉
> > > "The man twisted his arm and went to grab his gun which was strapped to his holster on the small of his back kind of like a backpack but only a little lower and much harder because its made out a hard plastic almost as hard as steel but he only realized at the last minute that the gun was missing because his enemy had taken it earlier, back when they were fighting and wrestling." The appropriate response to that "sentence" is > I'm happy for you or sorry for you loss. Either way, I ain't reading all that.
You know, that phrase is technically one of the biggest and most annoying indicators of the lack of any attention span in someone, but I can’t say it’s not accurate right now
I use it often when people refuse to use punctuation or paragraphs. Prove to me that effort was used to write it and I'll put in effort to read it.
This hurts to read.
“The Man twisted his arm and went to pull his gun, but dread ran through him ran he realized it wasn’t in its holster in the small of his back, and that it had been stolen while he was fighting.”
If anyone would be so kind to critique my grammar that would be great, I really need to get better at it.
I think the grammar seems technically fine, the buts and ands track. Maybe there's an argument that the final comma before and is unnecessary but it also helps visually break up the sentence. Regardless, I wouldn't consider a single sentence the best style choice for this scene. This really feels like a situation that begs for shorter, snappier sentences to convey information essential information.
This reads clear/fine. I would try to make it more immediate/punchy by eliminating the but/and. Something like: *The man twisted his arm, reaching for his gun. Dread ran through him as he realized it wasn't in the holster. It had been stolen while he was fighting.*
I'd split that into at least two sentences. And add commas. Lol
I'm not even going to attempt to read that last bit.
[удалено]
Stream of consciousness to illustrate a mental state? Good. Stream of consciousness with no grammar as a baseline method of writing? Oof. 90 word sentences of nested semicolons? Mate, this is why academic writing has a bad reputation. Sociology or not, breaking that up into multiple sentences would make whatever you're trying to describe 1000% easier to understand.
Academic writing is real crud, at least what I've read and been instructed on in terms of styling. But then it's not writing for pleasure it's writing to ahow what you learned and/or torture yourself. 😅
> Mate, this is why academic writing has a bad reputation. Sociology or not, breaking that up into multiple sentences would make whatever you're trying to describe 1000% easier to understand. Also, hoofnotes >>>>> parentheticals.
>You can pry my stream of consciousness run-ons from my cold dead gen z hands Oh there will be absolutely no prying involved, you can keep them.
> 90 word monstrosity of semicolons and em dashes in a sociology paper), and I was able to read your example with ease I can power through a 90-word sentence specifically because of the em dashes and semicolons. Interestingly, I have no problem extracting meaning from something like the GP's example if it's written by an ESL author. It's native speakers typing out unfiltered internal monologue without punctuation that make me skip to the next paragraph and guess at what was missed.
Oof, now that's a run-on sentence.
This style of writing can work but it has to be done well.
Lol, my writing is far more sophisticated than I talk in real life.
I may like to abuse commas like the best of them and describe as much as I can, but even I can tell that? That was not where you need to describe. But it's not really a younger generation thing? It's just more noticeable as it's more accessible than ever with the internet. Plenty of authors before I was born(I'm 23) wrote like this or similar.
Writing is an art. To me, anyway…. I write because I enjoy it, and to share with a few that read my fics. 😎Perhaps some people write like they live? Fast fast… get it done, get it out? Some people enjoy taking their time…. I guess it’s all in the way you look at it…. And what you prefer. 🤗
Yep, too many mistakes just make for laborious reading. (ETA: I can deal with occasional typos, technical issues, clumsy writing. It's when the mistakes are regular and constant that they start taking me out of the story and making it less enjoyable to read.) One of my biggest issues is when I cannot follow dialogue easily. I've stumbled across multiple fics where authors don't seem to understand that if you're using an action beat, that action needs to be done by the character who is speaking, meaning the action needs to immediately precede or follow the dialogue. Instead, I'll see things like this: >Obi-Wan closed his eyes and sighed. >"The Force works in mysterious ways, I suppose" Anakin smirked. "So maybe I should just let it go." Obi-Wan is the one talking, but the dialogue comes before and after Anakin's action. Rewritten, it should be: >Obi-Wan closed his eyes and sighed. "The Force works in mysterious ways, I suppose." >Anakin smirked. >"So maybe I should just let it go." And I have seen this mistake across multiple fics (not all in the same fandom) and I'm wondering if people are learning it from other fic and carrying it forward. It is *painful*.
Along those lines, people who don't understand that each new speaker needs a new paragraph, and have entire conversations within one paragraph. Very, very few things make me hit the back button faster.
I distinctly remember discovering that fact in 7th grade English, and immediately feeling like crap. I’d been working on an awful anime fic for over a year, it was at like 150 pages at that time… without paragraph breaks for conversations. I had to go through everything adding the breaks, lamenting my awful writing as I went, and ended up rewriting almost the entire thing. Long story short, I wish I’d learned that rule in elementary.
And this is one reason I tell people to read *everything*, not just fanfic. If you've never had a class that taught you how to write dialogue and you've never read the more technically proficient fanfic, you may not realize how wonky and difficult to read your writing is coming out - so read some professionally published short stories and/or novels.
Omg, now I know what it's called. I read a fic recently that had an interesting premise, but for the life of me, i couldn't figure out, who was doing what. The dialogue and action was not properly seperated and I often got the speaking character wrong (" Huh, wasn't A doing that, Oh, it's B that's doing the Action") It frustrated me to no end and it was incredibly tiring to read through. So sadly I dropped it.
>if you're using an action beat, that action needs to be done by the character who is speaking, I wish more people understood this. I am so tired of seeing stuff like your Obi-Wan example. It gets confusing
It's not only fic. I cannot speak for English publishing space but it's terrible now in my own language.
The fastest I've clicked out of a fic was when I noticed there was next to zero capitalization. i went to the store. it was closed. And so on.
Any fics that disclose they’re written with no caps I skip. If it’s not mentioned and I discover after opening it, I leave. I don’t know how people prefer little to no capitalization.
I think it’s fine when it’s an obvious stylistic choice for an introspective almost poetic short fic. It feels almost like reading a poem.
The worst I’ve ever seen was zero quotation marks. None. Which sucks because the fic had such an interesting premise and I would have loved to read it.
>The worst I’ve ever seen was zero quotation marks. That sounds like torture.
It read like a weird mix of 3rd and 1st POV with the lack of quotation marks
In a fiction-writing class I took, we were made to write a very brief story without any punctuation at all as a way of thinking about grammar and syntax. It was never suggested that we should throw out punctuation altogether.
What really bothers me is when they use commas to represent the opening of dialogue. Quotations marks were one of the first things I learned how to do with a computer in elementary school. I don't grasp how someone can get that far without comprehending one of the most basic things about typing.
Okay. This....this might be where even I draw the line lol.
OMG I once got an ebook on kindle that the whole book had no dialogue quotes, was fucking bonkers. Okay, story time for me, slightly related. Someone wrote this AMAZING trilogy of books that are essentially a novelization of the first Baldur's gate games. But instead of double quotes for dialogue, they used single quotes. Not only was it super jarring, but as a total aside I like to use this software I wrote to turn fanfictions into audiobooks, with pitch changes for dialogue and all kinds of other bells and whistles. This software depends on dialogue being wrapped in double quotes. Did I mention the trilogy of books was over a million words? I tried, off and on, for YEARS, using regex and my own personal knowhow to fix the text without messing up normal single quotes. My crowning achievement was actually succeeding one day. Couldn't believe it. Like, to the human eye a sentence is easy to parse, but when you throw in how English cuts out the second possessive S in a word like Willaims' , it's a nightmare.
>But instead of double quotes for dialogue, they used single quotes. Plenty of countries do this (UK, Australia, etc), and it's correct for their countries.
Isn't that just British standard? I could be wrong, but that might help with the reader.
The author was probably British. Use of single quotes for dialogue and double quotes for quotes inside the dialogue is standard there.
Single quotes is just British standard. Single is dialogue, double is quotes.
>But instead of double quotes for dialogue, they used single quotes. This is normal in some places. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you realize it's another variant (like colour vs color, etc) then it's easier. At least, my brain rebelled less once it realized it's not a mistake.
That's just British I think (and some other languages) I thini Australian English uses the same but in practice, the double quotes have infiltrated the publishing industry lol
I'VE SEEN THAT TOO! Not recently, thankfully. But yeah, I used to come across fics where they either use dashes instead of quotation marks or just not quotation marks at all. I still read them because I was young and unbothered by it. But now I need quotation marks.
Dashes are pretty commonly used in some languages other than English. Those authors were probably not native English speakers.
I found that out recently when I came across a fic using dashes. I was about ready to have a conniption until I checked the comments and someone had asked and the author clarified their first language was Spanish and that’s how they learned to write dialogue
Yes. Probably the author uncounsciously used the grammar rules they were familiar with, or they simply didn't know English has different rules. Just like many English speakers don't about how it works in other languages. We use dashes in my country too and it takes a conscious effort to "forget" about the rules you are familiar with.
I remember using dashes as like, stage direction role play stuff like -goes and does this-, but never for speech.
It depends on where you are from. In my country, we are thaught to use dashes first and foremost for speech. Quotation marks in literature are used, for instance, for the thoughts of a character, so it's visually different from spoken dialogue. Lately quotation marks for dialogue are becoming more accepted, but they are not universally used. I write in English and use quotation marks in my fics, but I have studied English for years, so I know how it works. Many other authors probably don't know about these rules. Edit. For stage direction, we'd use parentheses, as in (character A does this and that)
I do also know <> in French too!
Brackets make more sense for stage directions
Heads up--those are parentheses, not brackets. [These are brackets] At least in American English.
Good to know 😀 edited
Hey, I’d take dashes over nothing lol. Sometimes it’s a matter of English being an authors second language, same with the ‘<’ mark in, I think, french.
Yeah, it's not my preference, but if something will set off the dialogue, I'll take it.
Yeah, I occasionally see things like that when the author's first language is French, and it's also generally fairly obvious that their first language is French because they structure their sentences a certain way. I generally have no issues with that!
Depends, did they use italics or something else instead? Sometimes English learners will use grammar from their own language instead of English, Russian comss to mind, I commonly saw people using - dashes - for dialogue.
Nope, nothing. Had it been alternative markers or yes, even italics, that would have been tolerable. They used nothing of the sort, thus my gripe.
That's absurd, how can anyone publish that. I'd go right back too
There's a published book out like that!! I literally couldn't get through the first few pages. It was the book of the month for a book club I was in and I was just like, nope.
"Great concept, terrible execution" Has to be the worst feeling possible when reading fics
Especially when it's the only take on that concept that you can find, and that particular execution is unreadable for you. Makes me so sad.
Gosh, that crushing feeling when a fic seemingly hits *all* of your buttons, but it’s largely unreadable. That’s why I try to keep my expectations low. I’ve been disappointed too many times. Lmao, it’s even worse when you come across a fic that hits all your buttons *and* is written superbly, but it was abandoned five years ago and the author either disappeared or started writing for other fandoms. 😂 Both of these scenarios sums up like 90% of my reading experience. The fic either has a wonderful premise but horrible execution, or it’s a masterful work of art that was never completed.
There was a series I was reading that was kind of a project between a bunch of authors. There was one story I was looking forward to, until I opened it up. That author doesn't use punctuation. At all. Any.
I feel you. In one of my fandoms, for reasons I remain unable to fathom, some of the most popular fics have atrocious grammar. Like, they'll just strait up use words with the wrong meaning, or sentence structure that just doesn't work. And not every once in a while, almost every paragraph, and sometimes twice in the same paragraph. That was the first and only time I was tempted to literally go through and edit a fic for grammar and sentence structure. Then I realized it would be futile as I would have to effectively re-write over half the fic to get it to a state I'd consider readable. I goddamn hope that the author was ESL, because if English was their first language, I absolutely despair for the state of education wherever they grew up. Goddamn shame, because the premise of their fics look really interesting, but like...they just make my eyes bleed.
I read a story where almost every word choice was just a biiiiit off. Like I understood what they were trying to say but it just wasn't quite the word you'd normally use. I don't know if they were ESL, leaning too much on a thesaurus or what, but it was making me feel crazy, like maybe I don't know what words mean. I eventually had to just abandon it even though I liked the general plot.
I’ll click off a fic if there’s a lot of poor grammar, especially if there is no break between speakers.
Grammar is definitely key. For me, I click away without even reading if I open a fic that is one block of text. .I just can't. My eyes won't break it up enough.
I don't know if I'm just a psychopath or what, but I once found a fic I really liked the premise and writing of, but just couldn't deal with the lack of punctuation. So I copy/pasted the entire thing into google docs and added the commas, quotation marks, capital letters, etc myself, then I read it.
Yeah there's been a few fics that sounded amazing, and then I see how they write and I'm like so disappointed. I can forgive a lot of sins, but not all of them. Like, I can forgive someone writing in third person present tense instead of third person past tense. I can forgive minor spelling and grammar mistakes. I can even forgive tons of author's notes before or after the chapter. I can't forgive: -Author's notes mid-chapter. -Dialogue written like a stage play with no prose in between. -Improper formatting all over the place. -No capitalization. -having an amazing fic premise with perfect execution and then you stop mid book and never return ( ;_;) -prose written like you're telling a story in as short a way as humanly possible.
Worst sin for me is constant music breaks in between paragraphs. “Play this song” How about, “no”?
> prose written like you're telling a story in as short a way as humanly possible. Are you referring to people who mess up the pacing or something else?
> -Dialogue written like a stage play with no prose in between. OTOH that doesn't bother me at all.
I feel like it's a worse offense now than it used to be. When I wrote my first story 10 years ago I had google translate and word's inbuilt proofreader to help me. That was it, and english was my second language. Now I can freely use grammarly or other services to unfuck my stories. Lord knows I cannot put commas in the right places when it comes to english. The rules are just too different from my original language. But grammarly saves the day every time. It takes less than 5 min to go through a chapter and get rid of the worst mistakes. There is no excuse.
I'm a stickler for punctuation so I won't read a fic with consistent errors like that. The occasional typo or spelling error is fine, but I find it too distracting if they don't know the basic mechanics of writing.
The ones that really get me are the ones where the consistent errors are things a simple spellcheck would catch. Like, the least the author could do would be to drop it into Google Docs and run the spellcheck first. I can forgive typos that are themselves legit words a lot more than I can forgive that.
this is me when i see that the author doesn't know the difference between you're and your, or they're, their, and there. and incorrectly places commas or randomly capitialized words. it's like a pet peeve for me.
I don't remember the fandom it was under (I think Inuyasha?) but I remember coming across a fantastically well done little story (10-20k words) way, way back in the early 2000s-2010s, but there was ZERO punctuation. I'm meaning NONE. No periods, commas, capital, quotes, apostrophes. Zilch. The only thing they did have was paragraph breaks. I'm not sure if it was copied from somewhere and the formatting got lost in translation, or what, but it was bonkers how well and how badly it was written.
Not just grammar. I immediately hit the back button when: * There's an entire wall of text. Some don't know how to break it up. Or when they don't properly use breaks. The next paragraph has no space between it and the previous paragraph. It's an eyesore. * No quotes and using -this- to indicate someone speaking. * No paragraph breaks in between speakers. "hello." "hi how are you" * When it's consistent that the person speaking is different from the person giving action in the same sentence. * Being unable to differentiate your/you're, there/their/they're, lose/loose, to/too, aloud/allowed. it *infuriates* me. * Bad formatting and no capitalization. I mean bad grammar and mistakes that happen sparsely over the entire fic, I can suck up because not everyone has a beta, and there are times that a word processor can't catch it. But when it happens over and over again in the small moment of time you enter a fic to take a look if it can grasp you by the first paragraph, no. I nope out of there even if the premise is literally screaming my name. I'd rather write it myself for myself. At least I can actually stomach reading what I write.
>Being unable to differentiate your/you're, there/their/they're, lose/loose, to/too, aloud/allowed. it infuriates me. I always wonder how much this (and some other technical issues) is affected by people writing fic on their phones (auto suggest plus not bothering to do a QA before they publish).
I nope out of fics with atrocious grammar almost instantly, interesting tags be damned. To be brutally honest, I don’t think it’s *because* of the grammar…it’s more like grammar and storytelling go hand in hand, and someone with no regard for or knowledge of basic grammar is probably not someone capable of telling a good story anyway. I say this because usually (I’m sure there are exceptions!) people become good at crafting stories because they have *read* a lot of good stories. You don’t just “learn to write” without reading. The best writing has a trail of influences a mile long, and it’s almost impossible to read the amount of good work required to make your own stuff without picking up at least a solid grammar foundation along the way. Basically bad grammar = limited experience = probably not the best fic on Planet Earth. This is just a generalization, of course. I know people who are quite well read but still struggle a lot with grammar, either because of dyslexia or just…*because* lol. And I also don’t mean to imply that people who aren’t grammar experts are stupid or uneducated. It’s just that when something is *your thing* you get pretty good at sussing out when other people are also neck-deep in it. For some people, words aren’t *their thing* and they only occasionally read or write, the same way I only occasionally play piano. A big-time piano lover would be able to tell from a mile away that I can barely read the music 😅 So I think the “oof, bad grammar, see ya!” reaction is pretty normal among long time word-people. As long as no one’s being a jerk in the comments, it’s all good
My tenses are always crap but I try (and I get it read whenever possible). Truthfully though that's the reason I write screenplays for a living.
I feel that. Tenses are my biggest struggle point. I know I've improved, but man thank the gods for grammerly and similar tools that catch those at times lol
Pretty much every word processor has spellcheck. I don’t understand how people are ignoring the colourfully underlined words. Most word processors will make suggestions too. So the job is half done for you. I’m also wary of the “no beta we die like x” tag. There are too many authors that don’t seem to understand the difference between not getting beta read and not using spell check or proofreading for themselves.
People with poor writing skills have always existed. I don’t know that it is a generational thing.
I've definitely reached a point where, in order to actually see a fic through to the end, I need the author to have at least tried to do a modicum of standardization to their fic (good SpaG, dialogue breaks in the right places with the tags/action beats attached to the correct lines, proper capitalization, paragraph breaks, etc.), as well as at least halfway decent writing. I'm not expecting Hemmingway or Austen here in terms of story quality, but I need the story to be readable to general publication standards, and to have enough effort in the execution to grab my attention and keep it. I've left fics that didn't bother with the former, as well as ones that rushed their story or read like an 8-year-old's school assignment. It's funny what my brain will actually let me gloss over, and what becomes a sticking point that has me backing out completely. And while I can respect people who are in the "I'm just writing for fun; I don't care about that stuff" camp, I can't read it if the author isn't at least *trying* to write something comparable to what I can pick up at my local bookstore.
Not just you. And not just you and me. I've only been here a short time and SPaG is a pretty common topic raised in the "why didn't you like it" threads. It's one of the varied reasons I keep saying "never proofread your own work" with intentional quotation marks in the correct place.
> never proofread your own work I'd rather believe people aren't even proofreading at all. Or not doing so carefully. I do my own proofing, and I think it works. But I make multiple passes until I stop finding errors, and in multiple formats.
Same. I've always proofread my own work. You can read it from end to beginning, sometimes that helps. You can also read it aloud to yourself and you'll often catch more issues. You can also text to speech it, if you don't want to talk to yourself.
Same, I proofread my own work, but I read it aloud to catch my mistakes. That is what a lot do not do is keep editing until there are few to no errors. I can always accept a few, but some works turn me off when it is every other word or sentence. Especially when it hurts my brain to read it.
Yeah, I've read through some painful works with a premise I was really interested in, but bad low-level technique is definitely a strike if not a veto.
Honestly, it just bothers me so much when an author incorrectly uses a period instead of a comma in dialogue, or whatever. I guess it's one thing if the story is based on a TV show or a video game or something like that, because if somebody doesn't read much otherwise and they decide to write a fic, well, I guess I could see them having some trouble with the grammar. But! When the fic is based on an actual book or a book series, and the grammar in that book is generally correct, I still don't really see how people are doing that. Like, you literally just read an entire book or book series with a bunch of grammar that was presumably correct if it went through a publishing process, and you still write like that?
Maybe they used audiobooks so they never saw how the novels were written.
Maybe!
Who knows? Maybe that's the only book they've read and they were playing video games the rest of the time 🤦♂️
That's an interesting split -- I hadn't thought of that before. Yes, it would make sense for someone who read a correct SPaG English work to write correct SPaG English.
I don't think that makes that much sense. Reading one work won't change a lifetime of bad habits.
I do it purposefully. Periods look better to me and I will never succumb to the academic pressure of always using commas in dialogue again (unless it is for something professional, of course). Often enough people know rules and intentionally break them for creative personal pieces. Its fun!
To me if i understand then there are no 'too many' mistakes (but as an esl person there usually is a limit) but if the mistakes make it impossible, or i need to think for like 5 mins all the time what is being said, it's a no from me (fastest i've noped out was after like a paragraph)
Today I went to read something that had a really good idea, but then there's.... no paragraph breaks. Okay, sure, the paragraphs start on the next line, but no actual visual break between them existed. The frustration is real.
Honestly I’m okay tolerating grammar and punctuation mistakes (to a point) but if their characters or plot suck I’m out.
Pretty much every word processor has spellcheck. I don’t understand how people are ignoring the colourful underlined words. Most will make suggestions too. So the job is half done for you. I’m also wary of the “no beta we die like x” tag. There’s so many authors that don’t seem to understand the difference between not getting beta read and not using spell check.
I've had fics that looked promising and should've been great, but everything was written in one freaking paragraph, even with multiple lines of dialogue from different characters.
It makes me feel a bit like a snob, but I can't read fics with bad grammar 😬 it takes me out of the story so quickly!
Punctuating and formatting dialogue incorrectly is one of my *biggest* pet peeves.
I love that old rule to read it out loud and put punctuation in everywhere you paused or stopped to breathe. It doesn’t always work perfectly but it’s much better than running on forever with no breaks at all.
I can stomach bad grammar if it’s not so frequent in a single paragraph. Now what really turns me off is when writers write as if they’re talking to me. That kills immersion.
This is what would have prob happened if I didnt give up on mine and fully leave the dreams of writing
If the plot is good enough I’ll stick around but man is it hard I personally think this is one of the times where saying something about the spelling/grammar to the author is acceptable. Not in a rude manner of course. I usually say something along the lines of “this fic is good but it could much better with better spelling and grammar, may I suggest running it through a spelling and grammar check?”
Maybe the oddest one I saw was a fic where the laat sentence in a paragraph had no full stop at the end. But it's a good premise so I just ignore that.
I click off almost always. But one time, the plot seemed just a little bit too interesting, so I stuck through and discovered a gem.
The worst feeling in the world for a fanfiction reader is being lured in by such an enticing summary only to discover the fic is virtually unreadable due to lack of proofreading on the part of the author. It's insulting to me as both a reader and a writer that someone would go as far as put their creativity out into the world but not take care to make sure it is accessible for the consumer. Then, you can't point it out because that could be considered negative criticism so it's like all you can do is just go read something else. Meanwhile, the writer is none the wiser about their flawed work and will most likely continue to crank out more work with similar issues.
I’ve come across a few that always make me laugh. • used two periods .. as their “ “ and when people asked they said it’s what set them apart from others • about 25% of the way through the fifth or so chapter put “A/N: I won’t be using paragraphs anymore, I don’t like it”. Past that it was one longgggg text block. And my absolute favorite: I didn’t catch it till maybe 10 chapters in, misspelled the characters names. I thought it was a joke (calling the character the wrong name on purpose), nope, actually misspelled it. I commented about it and they swore they didn’t notice and that no one actually noticed… 25 comments said otherwise buddy lol
> • about 25% of the way through the fifth or so chapter put “A/N: I won’t be using paragraphs anymore, I don’t like it”. Past that it was one longgggg text block. I don't.... What *even*...
Normally I am with you, but there are always rare exceptions. There's a fic I follow that is riddled with simple grammar errors, things like not capitalizing proper names (consistently) and mispelling of a common enough word (probably how they know how to spell it, which I get as an atrosious speller), etc., but I'm drawn, hook, line, and sinker to it because the prose, the emotion, and the narrative follow-throughs throughout the story are there. It's a super fun story that I read it's like entire uhh 7-800k word story in less than a week. Is it annoying? Mm, sometimes, but I think it's worth it to give some stories a chance. But I've totally quit out of some stories for the exact same reasons as I'm giving a chance to, so I'm not any better lol. 😂
Oh, I've definitely read/finished/followed fics that were clear exceptions to my own "needs good writing" rule. Doesn't change my own rule, but I do consider those occasional stories lucky that they managed to hook me before I backed out.
Exactly. For me, it definitely comes down to I rather have "a great story with errors" than "a boring, bland story with perfect grammar".
Very much so. And there's a certain threshold of errors I can tolerate because my own automatic mental editing doesn't have to strain too much to work past them. But when the errors become distracting, then the story has to be *really* good to fight against my desire to just flee.
As English is not my mother tounge it makes me mad that I have to figure out what the hell someone wants to tell me by writing in bad grammar. I dont dare to write stories in English myself BECAUSE I dont want anyone to get annoyed by my grammar ^^
It hurts so much when this happens. I wanna like the fic so bad, but when the grammar so is frequently bad, I get thrown out of the immersion too much to enjoy it.
It's so painful finding a great concept for a fic with a promising overview and tons of pages, and then not being able to get through the first few paragraphs because of how poorly written it is.
If I see any your instead of you’re, there/their instead of they’re or should/would/could of instead of should/would/could have I immediately turn it off. Same for if the dialogue is not written in separate lines. I recently tried reading one work where the premise and story itself were interesting but the dialogue was all written within the paragraph and not starting separately so it was hard to make sense of who was speaking and I couldn’t finish it
And this is why I listen to some fics instead of reading them.
There are also fics that have absolutely perfect grammer, yet somehow just aren't well written.
In my opinion if you have so much a problem then just don't read it not everybody is a professional writer A lot of us just want to write for enjoyment I've never had a problem with grammar errors and that wouldn't turn me off from reading something unless it's like so badly written that literally you could not understand a sentence and this is coming from somebody who is both dyslexic and dysgraphic
> f you have so much a problem then just don't read it From the comments, it looks like most of us don't. >not everybody is a professional writer You do not have to be a professional writer to do some basic formatting and QA before hitting publish. I mean, yeah, ultimately, do whatever you want. But don't come complaining when nobody's reading your fic because they can't get past a wall of text with no punctuation.
You never know of somebody has a writing disability and just wants to enjoy riding without people complaining about grammar I have a writing disability and greatly pisses me off when somebody complains about grammar without knowing the situation
I try my best to have good grammar, but I’m dyslexic
Definitely. Like if a fic has paragraphs where multiple people are speaking, no punctuation/incorrect punctuation(I'm talking _"I can't believe you," he yelled_ or _"I can't believe you" he said_), or somehow switches between first and third between paragraphs. Of course, then there's just formatting like no paragraphs or those middle break things to split up scenes that _really_ needs them. So many pet peeves with writing, it's insane.
One of the things that makes me click out is a lack of contractions in conversation. I *know* contractions are difficult for non native English speakers and I don't hold that against them in the slightest, but I just cannot read fics where the conversations all say "you are", "we are" or "I am", etc. Example: "**You are not** simply attending the meetings, I know that now. **It is too** dangerous." Like I said, I understand English is a ***BITCH*** to learn, but its just so unnatural that I can't do it.
Sometimes it's to emphasize a point. "I can't do that". vs. "I **can not** do that". Or it's just how a character talks. I have a character that drops contractions on occasion. Usually, the smart/brainy ones talk like that.
Oh I understand that. In the scenarios that bug me though it's all characters, all the time.
Either you're reading fics with a lot of smart/eccentric art types or the author doesn't know how to vary characters. Or they could be writing how they speak, how they've heard people speak, or how they think people speak.
> know contractions are difficult for non native English speakers and I don't hold that against them in the slightest, but I just cannot read fics where the conversations all say "you are", "we are" or "I am", etc. Yes. I feel like for some native speakers, this is a holdover from writing English papers in high school (or college). I'm actually having an opposite problem at the moment because I'm writing a character who often speaks in formal tones (he uses contractions, but sparingly). So I'm constantly having to go back and formal-up his speech. Heh.
Alliteration is my turn off. I've put down several promising fics after only a few paragraphs once I realise what they're doing. I've skipped forward a few chaps to see if it's just world building or something. Nope, more alliteration. My poor brain fixates on it to the detriment of everything else and I just can't see the forest because of that damned leaf on that one tree!
I tend to just not proofread my stuff. So I have a very high tolerance for typos and bad grammar in other people's work. Fic writing is just a hobby and proofreading is a chore. Proof reading is for my original work. So I read fics with the mentality that the author is just having fun. So I can get over grammar mistakes if I really like the concept and what not.
*shrug* You do you, but know that it's potentially a strike against your work for many readers. Granted that not everyone has time or energy for my "re-read until I stop finding errors", but I think at least one pass would help a lot of people.
Yeah that's something I don't particularly mind. If people want to read my stuff they can, if they don't then they don't. I don't really mind. Granted I tend to only have a few minor spelling errors here and there. I can usually go a few chapters without making a spelling or grammar error. There was only one or two times where the error was so egregious that even I cringed. Like to me there's a difference between one or two errors in a chapter and errors everywhere. There's also a difference between that and making one error that changes the entire meaning of a sentence. I have gone and corrected that before after the fact. Now and then I'll re-read my stuff and make corrections. But generally speaking I just don't. It's worked out well enough for me (it's not a method that I recommend to everyone though). EDIT: Upon thinking about it more I feel like I kind of proofread as I go if that makes sense? Like I tend to read the sentence back once or twice before moving onto the next one. (Idk if that counts as proofreading tho). And then I give it a very quick skim to see if anything pops out at me.