red squiggles

[Caged Maiden]

hey scribes, I just did a spelling and grammar search for my first two scenes I just wrote, and I had to do about thirty "adds" as in, words I added to my dictionary. Most were character names, but some others were words that are real, but don't appear in my dictionary, like "fleecer". I just wondered (because I'm not the most computer savvy person on the planet), so...those "added" words make the squiggles disappear on my computer, but when a friend opens the document, they'll show up on their one, right?

So, my question is whether they bother you.

When you read a document for crit, does it at all hinder your reading of or enjoyment of a story to have squiggles all over? I notice when I'm reading a manuscript that uses the English spelling of words (vs. American), but I only notice because of the words themselves, not the squiggles. I've gone squiggle blind because i write fantasy, I guess. I was just wondering whether you folks thought it was a distraction, or whether it hurts your reader experience at all.

I can honestly say I don't mind the squiggles themselves, as I don't even notice them, but the red ones seem in my mind less worrisome than the green ones. While I certainly write sentence fragments and passive voice (rarely), I've noticed in other people's manuscripts that when I open them, they're like a wall of green, which I think becomes distracting, not because of the colored squiggles, but because they are symptomatic of a style that might be harder to read?

Do you guys have any feelings on this stuff? I just wondered whether it benefits me at all to try to do away with as many squiggles as possible, to benefit beta readers, but then I figured I could only add words to my own dictionary, so maybe it would be more useful for me to leave the squiggles alone, so I'm seeing what my betas will see, and then I can be aware of how the pages look to them? Or maybe no body even cares about the squiggles at all. Like me.

 

[Heliotrope]

I actually prefer to read the work in a pdf format. I even save all my drafts as a pdf because I find it easier to read and edit and get into without the wiggly lines. That's just me though.

 

[ThinkerX]

I strive to eradicate red lines as I write by adding words to the dictionary.

Green lines (passive voice) are rarer. I have noticed that even some short declarative sentences 'I am possessed' will get classed as passive voice. I tell myself that a few passive voice sentences are quite acceptable.

 

[Caged Maiden]

yeah, I don't have a lot of green lines, but usually, they indicate my sentence fragments, which I use for emphasis sometimes, so I'm keeping them.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Squiggles don't usually bug me, they do I just turn them off.

 

[chrispenycate]

I glory in red squiggles. Some of them are characters names, or geographical features, or religious observances, or even articles of food or clothing archaic enough that my dictionary has never met them. Others are genuine typos, generally of the 'two letters inverted' style but also a tendency to put an apostrophe where it is not relevan't, or useful - I have no idea why I do that, but it's nice to have a program drawing my attention to it. Then there are the UK/USA differences of opinion in spelling, with my word processor being in UK English while my browser is across the Atlantic somewhere - I do realise that the differences of opinion exist, but when rereading some red accentuation is handy.

Worse is when I invent a word, even if its meaning is clear. I frequently use to nostalge as a verb (non-transitive) which clearly annoys my electronic overseer. It probably does so for biological editors, too. Don't ever use autocorrect. All of which renders my page more colourful and cheerful.

But they still can't point out faults like the tendency to lack force at the centre of the keyboard, leading to perfectly acceptable words which just don't happen to be the right ones, leading to 'tan's' instead of 'than's' ore 'were' in place of 'where'. And spotting one's own mistakes is always more difficult than pointing out other people's.

 

[skip.knox]

I agree with Demesnedenoir: I just turn the squiggles off. Actually, I turn off spellcheck and grammar check entirely. Such things have no business in the writing phase. Once I'm in editing mode, then I invite them back in, provided they behave themselves.

As for the unusual words, I *think* you can save new words to a separate dictionary, which you could then ship to your editor. I may be remembering the days of WordPerfect, though. (also known as the Good Old Days)

 

[TheKillerBs]

I use WordPad so no squiggly lines for me, either.

 

[Penpilot]

I'm weird. I like the squiggles. I think it keeps me honest. What I mean is, if I'm leaving a red squiggle in, I better be darn sure of what I'm doing.

The red helps me when I edit. At a glance, I can double check the spelling of my fictitious names and make sure they're consistent. And I can confirm, yes that's how I want to word things even if it's not technically correct.

Funny thing, I do the opposite of you do with spelling. I live in Canada so we use the English spelling for things, but for my writing I use the American spelling.

 

[Caged Maiden]

You know, the hardest part of reading a document from one of my Canadian, British, or Australian friends, is that I'm just not well enough versed in all the spelling differences to read it well. Words like armour and colour are easy, but defence and others just look like misspellings to me, so often I find myself highlighting words I can't tell if they're misspelled and asking "is this spelled right?"

HA! I didn't know you could turn off the squiggles, but I kinda like them. To me, it helps keep me aware of stuff. I like to make sure I'm spelling people's names right and all that stuff, so sometimes I add their name to the dictionary, but I've grown so used to the squiggles, we have like a happy friendship. More like a symbiotic relationship. Like, if I banish them by adding things to the dictionary, it feels like I'm no longer writing fantasy or something.

I just worried that perhaps it's distracting for a beta to see all my sentence fragments, odd names for holidays and made-up magical babble, etc. and that I should curtail the squiggles in some way.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who is proud to call myself a friend of the spell-check squiggles.