Grammar

My grammer used to be terrible, but now I have improved a lot and I see mistakes in my own work, which is very helpful.

This. So much. I still see works that don't even have the word "I" capitalized.

People learn this stuff in first and second grade! Why is it so hard?

Totally agree with all of you! I used to make lots of mistakes when using quotation marks, but when a couple of people mentioned it to me, I started focusing to not make more.

And as a reader myself, I know it really annoys me when someone makes too many mistakes. There was one story in particular by writewannabe, her storyline was really good, but she made way too many errors. I mentioned all of them in one of her chapters, and it took so long that I got sick of the story completely. I skipped a couple of chapters just to see what the end was and that was it.

I believe people should always re-read their stories before publishing them, or they could potentially turn people away from reading their stuff!

"Liked" this thread.

The main problem I see is that a ton of people don't capitalize 'I' when reffering to themselves. I mean, what's so hard about that?

In literary works, some people purposefully uncapitalize the 'I' to emphasize a feeling of loneliness or low self-esteem. It's an interesting trick, but there's a huge trade-off. When you're writing something, you want to fully capture the reader's attention and even the slightest distraction can destroy that. An uncapitalized 'I' is pretty glaring and will interrupt the reader from the experience you've created for him/her. So for the sake of a trick, you've destroyed the reader's experience. Like I said, that's a pretty big trade-off. The only major poet to ever do it and succeed was e. e. cummings, and he wasn't doing the uncapitalized 'I' as part of a trick. Rather, it was his writing style and in that style, it's the capitalized 'I' that's a huge distraction.

Outside of literary works, it's just laziness and an inability to use the keyboard. A lot of people rely on caps locks instead of the shift key for capitalizing their letters, and so having to press '[caps lock] [I] [un-caps lock]' every time is annoying. But what they don't realize is that the 'shift' key is so much easier.

In continuation of Nate's post, there's also auto-correct in Word and other such programs. They almost get rid of the need for spell check and using of the shift/caps lock key to capitalize. Just type in a lone "i" in Word and it gets capitalized. Same for the start of a new lines/sentence.

*sigh*

People are getting lazier and lazier nowadays, it seems. I, for the record, do not like auto correct. Sometimes if I have the name a fictional place in a story, it will keep trying to correct it to something else.

Nate, I used to use Caps-lock for 'I' all the time. Glad to find out that others have that problem too...would you happen to be one of those others, Nate?
Anyways, I've noticed this problem a lot too, and I do have a lower level of respect for those who write without near-perfect grammar. However, when reviewing, I check the YWS-age and realtime-age of the writers, and pretty much base my comments on that.

Also, who here isn't doing added grammar-check simply because this whole thread is about grammar? Guilty as charged.

Speaking of ee cummings! My mom and I adore this quote:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

Good lord, Kamas. 0.o

I was guilty of not capitalising my "i"s when I first joined. It didn't take me long to change that. C:

Yep, YWS has turned me into a sharp-eyed, nit-picking machine, and bad grammar just kills me inside. For example, we received our art homework typed out on a little slip of paper. They were really small mistakes but they just jumped out at me. And yes, I'm guilty of underlining them...

And Facebook... *Twitches* It annoys me. Some of the groups, and what people say, and the sheer determination to get every word wrong! Well, that's Facebook, not a writing site. But still...

Just thought I'd give my two cents.

C:

EmmaJane wrote:And Facebook... *Twitches* It annoys me. Some of the groups, and what people say, and the sheer determination to get every word wrong! Well, that's Facebook, not a writing site. But still...

Yeah, loads of Facebook group titles etc. have terrible grammar. I joined a group that said something like, "I would have joined your group if it wasn't such a grammatical failure". And yeah, it is Facebook, but that should be no excuse for these people - this is our language, it's how we communicate! We have these rules and standards so that we can actually understand what people are saying! Also, Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss is a great book for nit-picky grammar freaks like us, and perhaps as a subtle present for people who could use some help.

I realize this is an old topic, but Kamas' post just made me lol hard.

So I thought I'd share my own old review, one of the first I made:

seeminglymeaningless Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:04 am wrote:hey wow!

that was awesome!

maybe u didn't intend it to be creepy, but man!!! gave me goosebumps everywhere!

if this website was like deviantart.com i'd so totally favourite that!!!!

nice going!

i'm going to go check the rest of ur work now.

cheers!

jai

*cringes*

Elinor Brynn wrote:*sigh*

People are getting lazier and lazier nowadays, it seems. I, for the record, do not like auto correct. Sometimes if I have the name a fictional place in a story, it will keep trying to correct it to something else.

Same here. See, my first name is uniquely spelled. Therefore auto correct will change almost everything I write. But it's sad. Society's lack of grammar skills. When people write run-on sentences, do not capitalize their 'i's, names, locations, and the like, is a serious turn-off.
My mom decided to write a novella. As I read the first few chapters, I almost began to cry. She doesn't use commas, quotation marks, or general capitalization.

LittlePetRock wrote:

Elinor Brynn wrote:*sigh*

People are getting lazier and lazier nowadays, it seems. I, for the record, do not like auto correct. Sometimes if I have the name a fictional place in a story, it will keep trying to correct it to something else.

Same here. See, my first name is uniquely spelled. Therefore auto correct will change almost everything I write. But it's sad. Society's lack of grammar skills. When people write run-on sentences, do not capitalize their 'i's, names, locations, and the like, is a serious turn-off.
My mom decided to write a novella. As I read the first few chapters, I almost began to cry. She doesn't use commas, quotation marks, or general capitalization.

Tell me you smacked her up the head and gave a time out.