Friday, September 13, 2013

OH! NO! ... IT'S ... A GRAMMAR NAZI!

Ve haff veys of making you write ... correctly.

OH! NO! ... IT'S ... A GRAMMAR NAZI!

Was looking through the Legacy Story Stats section of my page (C V Ford) on Fanfictiondotnet when I noticed this interesting little "review" by a one Ms. Essential for a story I did called "My Gaijin American Boyfriend". This is quoted verbatim:

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Ok here's my view on this, your grammar is ok as your punctuation is kind of out of place.

As you've used ellipsis for hesitation in your sentences quiet a lot or you could have used a comma ( , ) at some parts as commas also let the reader have a pause and then continue reading.

At some parts where your writing is like "THIS is serious ..." Instead of writing This in capital's you could have put in lower case like this 'This' but then put it in bold so it looks like it has more emphasis when the reader reads it.

But the chapter is so far good.

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Hmmm ... Call me paranoid but I kinda' get the feeling she was more into "correcting" me than in reading the story. Maybe it's because the actual "review" is only one short sentence long.

I then went to her profile page & found this intro. Also quoted verbatim:

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By the looks of it I've got quiet many people viewing my profile and I'm not that surprised about it. If you may have noticed I've been going round writing some reviews on stories that are needed to improve so, I apologize if I do write some harsh or cold reviews but if I do, that's how bad your story grammar is and then you'll need to improve a lot. Ok I'll say not everybody is perfect including me but to just say for authors please type properly in good grammar and literacy if you want a good story. If English is not your first language ok I can go with that but ever heard about the Proofread writing? Were you upload your story document and click to view it and then notice that green tick with ABC above it, well click it to check your writing mistakes it corrects a lot of things and you'll realise how much mistakes you type when you don't even know it!

Looking at some stories I've seen many authors start Fan fiction and mess up with the grammar and writing, they may have started Fan Fiction at a young age who knows? But looking at some stories they type now is pretty impressive how they improved on their typing skills including English grammar in maybe just over a few months or even a year!

My motto: Focus on what you can't do, not what you do

When your typing, write it out on paper before hand if needed to. Read over it before you put the chapter up. It might take time but if you want people to really enjoy your story there's a lot of things that'll be needed to do.

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As for her motto, no truer words ever spoken. Think she'll actually follow it? Not quiet ... er... quite.

As an aside, I have been "chided" in the past by a one Edhla, a dyed in the wool Sherlock fan (And Sherlock fan fiction writer!), about my use of ampersands (& ... those things.). As she was so nice about it (And would actually read/review some of my stories!) I do NOT categorize her as a grammar nazi.

For years I used ampersands and didn't know what they were called until Edhla came along. To me, they were just those "and thingies". I will not now & never will use them ever again ... Oops!


Fanfiction.net web site here.

Ms. Essentials' page of profound knowledge and wisdom here.

Edhlas' Fanfiction.net profile page AND story listing here.

C V Fords' Fanfiction.net profile page and story listing here.

My Gaijin American Boyfriend, a Lucky Star fanfic here and here.

Go to Jays' Tee Vee blog main page here.

4 comments:

  1. I should think that she should focus on learning the difference between "quiet" and "quite".

    Pot, meet kettle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There is a thing My Son the Writer gets on me about, which is using numerals (70), rather than spelling it out (seventy).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My pet peeve is the use of that instead of who when referring to a person.

      NOT ... He's the one THAT did it.

      It's ... He's the one WHO did it.

      Delete