It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. ~Attributed to Harry S. Truman
Recent discussions have focused on various pet peeves, beta readers and the process of writing fanfic in general. It seems that an excess of grammatical errors can be a real deal breaker for some of our readers - causing them to give up on a story halfway through the first chapter.
At a minimum it should be standard for all authors to use spell check before posting a story. But what to do with those pesky things spell check will miss - like the use of your vs. you're, its vs. it's, too vs. to?
I had a question last night about the use of lay vs. lie. My betas were all off living their lives (or more accurately - watching The Office Marathon). I clicked on the following site to get out of my predicament. I just thought I'd share...
She has fantastic tips about punctuation, acronyms, and proofreading. I've been making mistakes I didn't even know about - and not just in my use of verb tenses (the bane of my existence!!!).
A typo or two is easily forgiven, but I think even if you consider yourself a grammar guru it never hurts to take a little refresher course. The quality of all our writing will be the better for it, not to mention the impact it could have to the level of enjoyment for our readers.
And let's face it. That's pretty much why we're here. :)
*Phrase can be found on a t-shirt sold over at TWoP.
--xoxoxo on March 30, 2007 01:34 pm 5 Comments
LOL.
That's a joke right?
Andi -- that may be a sign that we need to install spell check into the MTT interface. ;)
Thanks for the link! I would also recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves for anyone who is interested in basic grammar that gets messy.
And btw, after five years of journalism school, there are still times when I have to think about lie vs. lay and who vs. whom and such.
Lie vs lay has always been one of my worst offenses, which is why I pay extra attention to it. What gets past me most often is repeating the same words repeating the same words inadvertently.
One comment: when I'm reading a story and find a grammar "error" as part of dialogue, I generally read that as being part of the character's speech pattern, rather than a mistake on the author's part.
Tank godness a webcite is finaly acknowledgni grammer issues. I h8 it whan storys ar neerly inreadable...it ruin waht cuold be a gr8 fic'.