I took a break from my writing -- yes, I am still writing -- to read the reviews of some of my older stories.
In SF fandom, they used to say that the "coin" of fandom was the "egoboo", something that boosted one's ego. I guess that was what I was doing collecting egoboo.
I noted that a number of (annoying) comments were about my use of grammar and spelling. I plead not guilty -- mostly.
I don 't post examples of proper English. I post stories.
Not all of my characters are well educated. Some have accents. The ONLY way to show this is to use bad grammar and misspell words. Let's use some examples from the "Eerie" saga.
Shamus and Molly O'Toole didn't have much schooling. Both speak with a thick Irish brogue. They use contractions a lot, unusual ones, such as adding the contractions "'d", "'n", or "'ll" at the end of words to stand for "would", "than", or "will." They also use the verb form "t'be [doing something]."
Milt Quinlan is a lawyer. He almost always speaks correct English, with some of the "usual" contractions for words like "not."
Maggie de Aguilar doesn't use contractions as a way of showing that English is still her second language.
It could be a lot worse. The character Huckleberry Finn has TERRIBLE grammar, and his companion, Jim, speaks in what used to be called Eubonics complete with both bad grammar and a MASS of misspelling to convey what Mark Twain wanted to represent the speech of an escaped black slave. What rescues the book is the deep content, the story that Twain uses them -- and their speech -- to tell.
Under some conditions, characters stammer. If you don't think that educated persons stammer, read the transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes. I'm old enough to have read them when they first came out back in the 1970s. President Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, all these college educated men -- lawyers -- AND professional speakers stutter and stammer when they're talking in private, sounding each other out, considering options, or whatever.
Conversational speech is the first draft of formal written speech, and it's that conversational tone that I'm trying to create in the story. You, as the reader, are getting what the characters are thinking or feeling, without any editorial filter correcting their words.
And calling me on that doesn't help with your enjoyment of the story -- or show that you understand what I'm trying to do.
So, take the bad grammar and such with a grain of salt. (I will admit to being a bad speller at times.) And give the STORY a chance.
Comments
Lots of Your Stories ...
I am very familiar with your name and yonks ago, I read lots of your stories. Then I somehow lost track of you and your stories.
I'd love to read you again. :)
Gwen
You tell 'em, Ellie! Let the
You tell 'em, Ellie! Let the characters and the narrator have their own distinctive voices. If everyone (and every character) spoke in perfect standard English following one of the many stylebooks, the world and literature would be dull!
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Oh dear
I struggle to understand some people (joke intended). You write narrative as it should be written, which includes allowing for the voice of the narrator. You write dialogue as it is heard. Are there still such pedantic idiots around?
I feel your pain!
Edited to add: tell them to read "Flowers for Algernon" to see how heartbreaking accurate depiction of speech patterns can be.
"Flowers for Algernon"
"Flowers for Algernon", yes, such a great book!
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
,,,
oops, nevermind
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
I have only read the Eerie saloon,
Ellie and even though I pay attention to spelling and grammar I did not see anything, that distracted me from enjoying the story. You are perfectly right when you say, that trying to represent a character's descendancy or education may result in poor grammar and some unusual spelling, but that can even make the story more authentic.
What is stupid, though, not that I want to acccuse you of this, is when the voice of the narrator contains the common errors of uneducated people i.e. spelling things like they sound resulting in confusing they're, there and their for example or tail and tale and so on. That is in my view very distracting and has nothing to do with forming a character in a story. I repeat that I did not find any of that in your writing, but if I do find stuff like that in a story more than a couple of times, it makes me stop reading.
I know UK-English and American today are two different languages, but that is no excuse for stupid mistakes. I do find enough of those in comments or even posts on LinkedIn from people who claim to be educated and have university degrees and that is very sad. But I think if we strive to produce some sort of literature we shoud pay attention to creating something better.
Your writing belongs in that category (something better) in my opinion.
Monique S
wot
She said
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Compulsive grammarians suck
I don't think they read stories the same way normal people do.
If you wrote a suicide note they'd correct the English + give it back to you,
because they're far more into being superior than into anything we have to say.
Fuck 'em, dats wut I sez!
~Ronni
(One of my favorite authors here misspells simple words consistently and never met a
homophone she didn't didn't manage to get wrong, but I envy her gift for description,
absolute originality + the utter lack of recycled tropes in her stories. Her vision is her own and that's something you can't get just by learning rules of grammar + honing technique..)
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
I generally give a lot of leeway,
and I understand that for some people on this site English is not their first language. via this site and sites like Inkitt and wattpad, I have noticed that for people from Certain Asian countries, they have a difficult time with tenses. Putting current tense actions in past tense, and so forth. I know of one author on this site that is particularly bad at this. and while they have good concepts to some of their stories, in reading them I mentally have to translate their sentences into the correct tense. That becomes tiring to me. I will give a story and an author a chance if they make common grammatical and punctuation mistakes, so long as the story is understandable.
Writing accents and dialects
I generally don't have a problem when an author tries to visualize an accent or dialect.
But please keep in mind that not all of us read English in the same way.
For me it is a second language. I read English by the spelling, not "unconsciously" by the sound.
Therefore I struggle very much when the spelling deviates too much, needing to guess how that combination of letters could "sound" to a native speaker/reader. ;-)
Martina
you
Do exceedingly well Marti, you even manage to understand my Yorkshire! Now my reading of furren is by comparison appaling! Indeed it's a wonder I survive my trips to foreign parts - in over 35 years of visiting Germany i've increased my vocabulary to about 100 words! Lol (I really do wish it was more). Vorsprung durch Technik
Maddy the terminally incompetent!
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Your use of English to characterize is great!
At least for this reader, whose English is awful.
Thumbs up for you, Ellie! You deserve all the egoboo in the world. Your language mastery is great, at least to me!
Anyone who posts stories here...
...presumably wants people to read and enjoy their stories, and generally, the more people, the better.
Without doubt, some people are turned off by bad grammar (and I don’t class what you’re doing as bad grammar). So if a writer wants to get maximum people reading their story, they should ensure their English is good. It’s a simple marketing exercise.
And whilst I don’t class writing in accent as bad grammar, it does make it tedious to read, which will deter some readers from continuing. The way I’ve sometimes got around this in my work is the good old compromise: write the first few lines in accent and then switch to normal English from then on.
When it comes to Writing Stories...
...their are only three rules.
1. If at all possible, learn the rules of grammar. The benefits of doing so will last you till the end of your days.
2. Whenever required. Drive a coach and horses through said rules.
3. If rules 1 & 2 bother you. Forget them and write your story - WRITE YOUR STORY. That is the most important thing you can do.
Sophie