Part 13~Grammar, the serious version

I tried. I tried so much. Whenever I am tested on my reading analysis, my science, my mathmatics, and my grammar, grammar result is always the worst. There are of course many gramamr shops on AFF that are really good. However, after reading this, if you still want to go to them, find them on your own.

I’m a not really the best person to preach grammar rules because the only reason I sort of follow them is to not sound like an idiot. It is much easier to follow this little advice thing when I speak coherent English, right? I honestly hate people who are crazy about grammar and feel that a dash and a comma have such vastly different jobs that they can’t ever be mixed up, ever. There are some basics that I feel everyone should follow.

1. Capitalize the first letter of every sentence and whenever an ‘I’ stands alone or in a conjugation (I’m, I’ve). Some languages don’t have capital and lowercase forms of the alphabet, they have that one form, so I’ve seen people do that. If you know that a sentence starts with a letter then you need to do it.
2. Capitalize proper nouns. That is the name of a person, a title like President (if not accompanied by ‘the’ before it), a name of a location like Seoul, South Korea, and other things that slip my mind.
3. Use punctuation. End your sentences with a period or a question mark or an exclamation mark. Also, don’t let your sentences run-on, use commas and semicolons (‘;’) to break them up.
4. Put a space after punctuation. After a period or comma you need to put a space or you are just continuing the first word. My example end.Next is not a word.
5. NEvEr TyPe LyKe tHiS. Just what the is wrong with you? Do you think that is appealing? No, it is incredibly difficult to read. It’s difficult to type like that too. Why would anyone type like that? It is so incorrect I can’t even…
6. Never use texting shortenings. That means OMG and LOL are forever banned (unless the character is spelling them out in their dialogue). That also means you can’t use numbers and letters to shorten words like “I luv u 2!” It is difficult to read and it looks immature. 1-4 I can read through, 5 and 6 are like death skulls to me, I don’t read them at all.
7. Please don’t use capital letters to show that someone is yelling. THIS IS LESS OF A GRAMMAR THING AND MORE OF ME DISLIKING IT. If I did that every time my character (or I) yelled in a fic, half the fic would be in all caps. It is pointless to me, just use an exclamation mark.

If you can do this, do it throughout the entire fic. That includes the description, the foreword, the main fic, and even the excessive author’s note. It blows my mind to see the main fic be perfectly normal English then to find the author’s note to be written by a five-year-old. I feel like if you can just follow that throughout everything, you will know that your readers aren’t leaving you because your grammar .

Verb tense isn’t included on that list for a reason. Those seven rules should be things that even if you have never heard of them before, you should have read them and been “I will always do that now.” Verb tense, on the other hand, is difficult even for fluent English speakers. They test it on the SAT—they don’t test on whether or not a word is capitalized and they definitely don’t test to see if “I wud luv 2 do wat u syd” is proper. Verb tense is one of the things that bother me when it interrupts the flow of the fic, but it can’t be helped sometimes.

So, yeah.

I also don't want to talk about subject-verb agreement because it is once again something I don't want to explain.

Another aspect of grammar is spelling. Incorrect spelling really irritates me if I see repeated mistakes. There are so many ways to check if you’ve spelled something wrong. You can’t rely on AFF to tell you your words are spelled right because the AFF spellcheck is not 100% correct. But if you must, go ahead and use it. Use at least some form of spellcheck, heck, go get a beta if you need one.

It really disappoints me, though, when I see that even a beta still misspells things.

Actually, the spelling mistakes that irritate me the most are mistakes with homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings). When a person misspells words completely wrong but I get what they mean, okay, I get it, you just don’t know how to spell, and English probably isn’t your first language. When you just write down the wrong word altogether, I know what you meant, but you were just wrong. I think I get more irritated because you know what you’re trying to write, but you’re not thinking about it.

It’s hard, of course, to always write the correct word, but it really shouldn’t happen more than a few times.

People really need to pay attention to homophones. I have already posted up one list of tricky words (I actually posted it twice) in my blogs, which are linked to at the top. Below is a second list of other words people sometimes mistake. As with the other list, these words were given to me by a teacher—a teacher I hate.

Where-refers to location, “Where did you learn to write like this?”

Were-past tense of the to be verb, “You were not taught to write like this from me.”

We’re-a conjugation of “we” and “are,” “We’re going to have a long talk about this.”

Lie-When you physically lie down. “I am just going to lie down.”

Lay-When you physically place something down. “I will lay this on you.”

Though these are not homophones, they were on the list.

Alter-to change something, “I want to alter your stories.”

Altar-Where you place things, like candles. “We got wed at the altar.”

Bare-, uncovered. “I heard a certain someone was bare with IU.”

Bear-an animal or … let the sentence explain. “I bear a heavy burden.”

Break-to take a pause or destroy something. “Take a break from writing.” “Don’t break my heart.”

Brake-stops something, like a car. “Hit the brake, we’re going to crash!”

Born-to be created. “I was born on the same day as one of Siwon’s birthdays.”

Borne-the same as bear? “I have borne a heavy burden.”

Serial-a series. “It has no serial number so it is a fake.”

Cereal-breakfast. “I don’t like to eat cereal for breakfast when I’m sleepy.”

Chord-a musical term. “You think your oppa hit that chord? Ha, so delusional.”

Cord-like a wire. “Does Daddy want to cut the umbilical cord?”

Complement-to go well with something. “Maybe these rules will complement your writing.”

Compliment-a nice thing to say. “Oh please, no need to compliment me.”

Desert-a dry arid place. “I hate him so much I wish he was in the Sahara Desert!”

Dessert-a sweet after a meal. “There’s always room for dessert!”

Insure-to get insurance for something, like a car. “Always insure your car.”

Ensure-to give reassurance. “I always ensure good results from my lessons.”

Foreword- a note at the beginning of a piece of written work. “Not many people write good forewords for their fics.”

Forward-going in direction “Obama’s slogan was something about moving forward.”

Loose-when something is not confined. “My clothes are loose and I have loose change in my pockets.”

Lose-to misplace something or not have it anymore. “We lost the soccer match, but I didn’t lose my keys.”

Pedal-like a gas pedal. “Remember the brake pedal?”

Peddle-to illegal sell things. “I used to peddle knives in college.”

Petal-part of a flower. “Never pick rose petals, that is so sad!”

Pore-like the pores on a face. “Clean out your pores, you are so dirty.”

Pour-the action of pouring liquids. “Pour me some tea please.”

Poor- not having a lot of money. “I’m a super poor girl but this super hot rich guy likes me!”

Stationery-supplies. “I buy new stationery every year for school.”

Stationary-not moving. “If the object is stationary it is not accelerating and has no velocity.”

While not homophones, I have seen this mistake several times recently.

Thrash-to move violently. “The girl thrashed under her as she fought him off.”

Trash- garbage or to ruin something. “She trashed the room with trash!”

The next part of grammar is sentence structure. This part of grammar is using compound and complex sentences; dashes and commas; semicolons and colons; parenthesis and ellipses. When I had a review, this was the only thing they took off points for, run-on sentences. They took off points because I really was using a lot of run-on sentences, and they were being sticklers. (Oh, and I kind of bunched several ideas into one paragraph).

Sentence structure is a part of grammar that isn’t as important in terms of keeping readers. Of course it is important—I’m grateful the reviewer pointed it out to me, and I will try to be careful in the future—but having incorrect sentence structure is not going to determine whether or not someone reads your fic unless it is really, really bad.

I mentioned this in my third rule up there, but I meant bare minimum punctuation and sentence structure. Have you ever started reading a fic to find the chapter is one giant paragraph? Those are the instances when I want to go in and separate things into new paragraphs.

Other cases are when more than one person speaks in a paragraph. No, no, hit the enter key please.

Also, punctuation goes inside of quotation marks. If I’ve ever not done that, it was an accident.

Um, what else? Don’t abuse ellipses (the …) please. Very rarely do I come across ellipses in real novels, yet there are some people out there that use them as if they are commas. Ellipses are used to show a long pause, commas are used as a break in the sentence, not a long pause.

Dashes, I think I have a pretty good understanding of them. I think they’re used (I say I think because we’re not taught in school) also to break a sentence but in a way where another sentence is thrown in. My example sentence: “Of course [sentence structure] is important—I’m grateful the reviewer pointed it out to me, and I will try to be careful in the future—but having incorrect sentence structure is not going to determine whether or not someone reads your fic unless it is really, really bad.”

Proper grammar, past this, isn’t going to make much of a difference in reader turnout. Whether or not you can properly use idioms or clauses doesn’t matter much and people who correct you about it are es. It’s great to have proper grammar, of course, but people who go crazy about it need to back off. Obviously people are still learning how to become writers and they won’t be correct one hundred percent of the time. I appreciate everyone who does have above average control over grammar, and I appreciate people who try to spread their knowledge. I just think it’s sort of a lost cause.

One day in the future I would like for everyone to be erudite with a vocabulary and sense of grammar as grand as Shakespeare. For now I just want people to get the basics so they get the readers they deserve for their plot. I’ve read quite a few fics where the grammar wasn’t quite up to par but the story was incredibly thrilling. English isn’t their first language and it shows, so they don’t have that many readers. It makes me sad. 

Oh, and script writing is still forever banned.