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A number of people asked for this, so here it is: The top ten grammar errors most frequently made by inexperienced storytellers.
_________________________________ The document itself is fairly self-explanatory, but what is not self-explanatory is the rationale behind writing such a thing. I know that a number of people don't like being told what to do when it comes to grammar, and my aim here is not to exacerbate their grievances. Rather, my purpose here is simply this: If you write, and you don't follow these rules, no-one will want to read what you wrote. You could be the next Shakespeare, but if you ignore the rules --- and I don't mean break the rules, because there are times when breaking them is useful --- but if you ignore the rules entirely, no-one will ever want to read what you wrote. No-one will ever get past your first mangled sentence, much less to the good part involving the llamas and the chickens and the ghost of the boy's father in the bathhouse. Like it or not, most readers are much more harsh and judgmental than I have been in this document. So follow the rules to the letter until you learn the correct times to break them. Astute readers will know the difference between you voluntarily choosing to break the rules and you being ignorant of them. _________________________________ There is also one unspoken rule here, which is simply spell correctly. I think that almost goes without saying in an age where spell-checking software is cheap and plentiful. _________________________________ So there it is. If you want a printer-friendly PDF version of this, just ask, and I'll be happy to prepare and post one to my scraps. _________________________________ Edit, 2008-03-22: The typographical error in the example in #4 has been fixed. Daily DeviationGiven 2008-10-22Let's face it: spell check doesn't catch all your mistakes, and even if it does, you may not know exactly how to right your mistakes. Top Ten Grammar Errors by *phantom-inker is an excellent resource for those of us who are grammatically challenged and need a little help with editing. (Featured by `lovetodeviate) |
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March 21, 2008
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Osprey Hawk
"Spaceships are nice, but I think Giant Robots definitely rule" - Seina Yamada
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I remember back in the day in 'Nam, when me and the other fellers used to eat pataters every meal o' the day. Sometimes they was mashed. Others was fried. But one thing always remained:
They was pataters.
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"Even if you silence me, My silence will still defy you"-Me
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Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage the change the things I can't accept and the wisdom to...remember what I'm supposed to have the wisdom to do...
The first is illegal because there are two different speakers; the second is illegal because there are two topics (lunch, and then the completely unrelated topic of the weather).
The paragraphs below are legal and well-formed:
The first two paragraphs are legal because they only contain one speaker speaking on one topic. Notice that you can include descriptive prose in either paragraph, either before or after the speech; but generally, a paragraph should be structured so that it's either mostly speech or mostly description unless you have a good reason not to.
More importantly, the description should relate to the speech in some way: If you took Mary's statement of "I'm fine" and then followed it up with a discussion about Peruvian anteaters, that would probably be unrelated and require a separate paragraph --- unless it began with something like "Mary looked down at the Peruvian anteaters in the cage." Conceptual transitions like this, where you lead the reader from each part of the story to the next, are vitally important: If the reader's mind can't flow smoothly from one sentence to the next, if he gets jarred often enough, he's likely to stop reading altogether.
And notice, by the way, the missing ending " after the third paragraph; that is correct grammar, indicates that the speaker is continuing but is continuing in a separate paragraph with a separate thought. The inclusion of the word "And" to start the next paragraph helps as well: It indicates to his listeners that even John knows his speech is disjoint there, that what he's speaking is an unrelated afterthought. The third and fourth paragraphs here flow much more naturally than the single paragraph above that was mis-formed.
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Do you suppose if I were to put a signature here, anyone would bother to read it? No? I didn't think so either.
So my objective here is really not to be a proscriptive hardass: My objective is just to make many of the stories that I see online go from illegible garbage to at least passably readable, and that's a fight I think I at least have a chance of winning.
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Do you suppose if I were to put a signature here, anyone would bother to read it? No? I didn't think so either.
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