Proper Grammar (we don't need no education, no dark sarcasm in the classroom)

Figure it might be somewhat relevant to touch on this, considering its one of the key motivations to my recent "drifting away"" from the site. Ive currently posted a fair number of lore and stories from my fictional mythos, and while i will concede to anyone that I am not particularly grammatically gifted i do consider myself to be at least somewhat well spoken and able to put what I wish to say into words, even if said words arent spelled or punctuated correctly or are involved in a rather laborious run on sentence such as this one. But my seeking out of this site (Again coming from the perspective of a new inexperienced member.) has been to receive feedback, positive or negative, about the writing style or narrative of my work.
While i certainly got a fair bit of assistance from lovely members referencing me to sources to better my writing, the vast majority of feedback i received entailed improving the grammar of my story, or making it more appealing to the reader. From this point i would like to point out yet again that i acknowledge i am a new member, and my criticism comes purely from a outside perspective, but i believe that grammar and presentation is the refined perfection of writing, and to expect every "newby" to mill through his extensive work he may have written elsewhere to dot every I and cross every T is a tad, and i hate to use the word, pretentious. If I'm seeking advice on my writing I'm looking for advice on how to improve my character development, my scene creation, my descriptiveness and over-descriptiveness ect. With that in mind i wont spend nearly as much time perfecting every subtle punctuation mistake or spending half an hour on a particular paragraph to make it glimmer. to be clear, i completely understand how as literary minds, these mistakes can be jarring, and will shine like a beacon when someone writes im instead of I'm, but I'm merely suggesting it might be turning some writers, myself included, who are looking for more than a reminder to use spell check in their criticism. Apologies for the rambling response, I just figured this was a issue i could bring a different perspective to.

 

I can sympathize that grammar and spelling are genuinely difficult for some people, and issues like dyslexia can be a huge stumbling block. However, it is also genuinely difficult for me to read posts where things are misspelled and uncapitalized. Every single other piece of writing that I read--books, work documents, articles on the Internet--have been proofread and follow the rules of grammar. Breaking those rules adds labor to the act of reading your posts--the necessity of interpretation. It becomes harder to read your posts than any other person's: can you truly expect your meaning to be given the same time and consideration?

I know that sounds harsh, but consider posts in the Showcase. Any feedback there is completely voluntary on the part of the reader. You can't force anyone to crit something they're not interested in. On the same level, if it's difficult for them to see the scene, the characterization, the meaning, can you really demand that they do the mental work of correcting your errors for you? A few errors can easily be overlooked. Reading through dozens becomes a chore.

You are essentially saying that you want feedback, but you're not willing to take a few minutes to run your piece through a spelling and grammar check in MS word or a free program online to get that feedback.

I am sorry that this is turning you away from the forum. It is a struggle with two sides, and I think that you can either prioritize your comfort or refine your writing for a better response. Neither of these choices is right or wrong, but the world is a practical place. What you put in, you get out.

For what it's worth, I can see that you are well-spoken. I don't have as much of an issue with errors in regular forum posts as the rules enforce (it makes sense from a macro viewpoint, appearance of the site and all). But when it comes to presenting your writing for others to read, isn't that extra step of proofreading worth it? Don't you want people to see your writing crystal-clear, not fogged with errors? I think that if you put in the time, even just to spell- and grammar-check, you will get a difference in how people respond to your stories.

 

How to Be a Newby

Step One: Capitalize the letter "I" but fail to do so for the pronoun later in the sentence.

 

Step Two: Protect your newbie status; don't attempt to elevate yourself out of newbie status by learning such pointless things as proper grammar, proper spelling, and proper punctuation.

Step Three: Remind critics that criticizing newbies is like clubbing puppies to death. Since newbies don't wish to stop being newbies by learning pointless things, the clubbing would never cease and the puppies would never stop being clubbed. This is bad.

Step Four: If your critics hate puppies, instead point out that they are simply pretentious, because shaming critics works. Don't worry about being such a strong critic of those critics; newbies can't be pretentious themselves, by definition.

 

@Svrtnsse:

It is all about understanding.

So a new member shows up, receives lots of input, but the vast majority of that input came from pretentious people.

That's like biting the hand that feeds; or, calling the food bitter, so bitter. But I thought the puppy metaphor wouldn't hold if overused.

I was going to put a Step Five: Expect detailed, helpful, in-depth, and time-consuming criticism while putting out little effort yourself. But others had already addressed that point.

 

I agree with Svrt. I don't think that Centinuus is deliberately scorning grammatical rules the way that the original poster did, nor that an honest question about the necessity of perfect grammar needs to be shamed. There are better arguments that don't hinge on callousness.

 

I think the better point is that grammar and punctuation are not rocket science or brain surgery. There are definitely some finer points that are difficult to remember, some odd cases. But being able to hit Cap/Shift while hitting "I" is not terribly difficult; and being able to capitalize the pronoun I sometimes but not other times, unless a real physical ailment causes such an inconsistency, is not a sign of artistic license or ignorance of the proper form so much as laziness or negligence. Example from the post in question:

And to point fingers at those spending their time leaving commentary about these things, calling them pretentious, is itself pretentious, in my opinion.

This is not to say that I think Centinuus is a bad person or has wicked motivations or any such thing. I can somewhat understand where C. is coming from. But I simply doubt that C. has spent equal time considering where others are coming from.

Oops did I end that sentence on "from?"

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone, and firstly I would like to say I entirely understand the perspective of Fifth. As I stated I understand how some of the more literary minds simply cannot look past the exclusion of grammar in serious writing and as stated I entirely understand and sympathise with that. In particular I was establishing that when it comes to the more inexperienced writers such as myself who are most certainly not gifted with grammar, and tend to produce my writing in short bursts of inspiration frantically slapping keys until I think I have best visualised what was in my head. For me personally however, when I write anything it is just as I described, I'm enjoying attempting to chip away at the marble block of empty page until a magnificent sculpture of text has made up the image of what I was attempting to portray, to then go back, and examine under a microscope every fractured edge to polish, every indentation and crack to smooth, it seems extremely laborious in contrast to the thrill of initially jotting down idea's. while I can full admit this may just be me acting the part of a sub par writer, I believe that bad grammar and only bad grammar is not the full worth of any persons literary capabilities. and whilst obviously I expect that wherever I go I will be judged on my grammatical capabilities, or lack thereof, I would have hope the criticisms to not be quite as lopsided on the side of grammar. whilst I knew it was inevitable, I had hoped to hear more what people thought what I personally valued in my stories, that being the character and the settings and less so the grammatical opulence. As such I arrived at the conclusion that perhaps I suffer from a case of similar, but different in regards to this site. I hold the same values in terms of good storytelling, but at different ratio's.

 

By using the term "grammatical opulence" it strikes me that you are missing the point.

Grammar is not a gift or a talent, it is a discipline to be learned. When it is done well it is not remotely opulent, in fact, when it is done well you don't even know it is there. But it is a foundational skill for writing. When it is not done well it serves as a barrier that prevents your reader from getting to the stuff you (and they) think is most important.

Is a lot of writing laborious, hard, sometimes boring, detail work? You bet it is.

Your approach strikes me a little bit like a new player who shows up at basketball practice and when the coach says "you really need to work on your footwork and defense" says "yeah but what did you think about my around the back dribble to a fall away three?"

In this situation, if you want to solve the issue and you have an internal locus of control the solution is simple. Clean up your grammar and nobody will continue to comment on it.

 

I will say that I understand, maybe completely, wanting to share your writing after the thrill of pouring it out on the page. I have a not-great habit of posting up first drafts, or giving them to people to read, and in that first flash of inspiration it's easy to be blind to flaws.

However. When I get feedback that revolves around weak verbs or too much narrative distance, issues that I already know I have and have heard about before, my reaction is going to be "Ah well, what did I expect?" And not "Why don't people react to the story as though it were polished and immersive, even if it isn't, yet?"

Because while I know about these problems with my writing, if I haven't actually gone and fixed them, then I can't expect readers to overlook them. They're still there, mucking up the writing and the story with it.

There are a few answers to this, as I see it. You can:
- Spend the time to fix the grammatical issues before asking for feedback.
- Look for a different community, maybe one of readers and reviewers, and one that isn't as picky about presentation. (It may be harder to find critique aimed at helping you improve, but there are other kinds of feedback.)
- Ask specifically for non-grammatical or content-only feedback. (This wouldn't resolve the issue of people having to work to read your writing, though, and would likely result in less feedback.)

 

Well...painters use a canvas to create their art. Writers use words and grammar is a huge part of that. Why? Because clarity. If readers can't understand your prose, then how are they supposed to make judgments on character, plot, and setting? Just saying.

 

English is not my 1st language. I'm no writer and probably will never be. I'm here as a Graphic artist. That being said and following this thread, I remembered something I once heard from the great Anish Kapoor, an artist who works with reflective sculptures that need to be polished painstakingly by assistants days after days. He said all that work was needed in order to eliminate all and any type of imperfection, so that the viewer would not get stucked in the imperfection and could transcend the object. It became my motto.

 

Hi Centinuus,

First up let me say I feel your pain. Grammar is also a problem of mine. (As is typing too fast and never looking at what appears on the screen - which may explain some of my posts!) But the question here is what's the point you're trying to make?

Being a novelist / writer is a hard slog. And while I agree that the most important part of any story telling should always be the story, prose is important. Grammar is part of how you get your story across to the reader. It can't be ignored. A minimum standard of grammar is needed in order for prose to do its job - and its job is to basically get out of the way so that readers can enjoy what is read without having to be stopped every few sentences because another obvious discrepency has jarred them out of the story.

The OP charges that he wants to be able to write his posts in his own unique style and that we shouldn't complain. And technically he may even be correct in some respects. If his style includes non-capitalizations everywhere maybe that can be considered an issue of voice rather than a mistake. But that's not the point. Reread his OP and then ask yourself this - is it clear? Did you at a glance read his post with full comprehension? Or did you have to reread some of the lines? Did you look at the wall of text and immediately want to read something else?

I personally had to reread some of his sentences, lost track with the lack of paragraphing and the lower case "i's" kept throwing me. So in the sense that he wanted me to read his post and understand it, he failed. Yes it may be his voice. Yes if he's consistent it may even be correct from a certain standpoint. But if it doesn't get the message across clearly it fails.

If you want to post work for critique that's grammatically poor and don't want to be ticked off about that part, that's fine. Simply state it up front so everyone knows what is asked for. People will understand that you really only want to look at story structure etc. But don't imagine that your final work can be published in that form and readers won't have issues with it. They will.

Cheers, Greg.

 

The other answer is to get Grammarly. That is the bomb dot com. Helps me learn grammar, damn that comma, and helps me more so than regular ole spell check.