spelling

[Valkyrie]

This is a humorous look at commonly misspelled/misused words.  I love The Oatmeal. 

 

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

[Zombie]

Useful. And "than" is not the only comparison word

 

similar to
different from
greater than

 

 

 

 

 

.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Zombie

[Cia]

I want to know why the graphic for It's and its says riding a wolverine but the damn critter's a manatee. LOL The bad thing about these types of writing rules is that you must just KNOW them. There's no substitute for knowledge with program editors.

[Timothy M.]

English isn't my first language, but I would never make any of those mistakes (or at least I'll catch them when I read my text again). Most of them make me cringe with irritation when I see them in stories and for a couple of the examples I hadn't even realized it was possible to mix them up.

However, if the cartoons help children distinguish or understand the difference that's good, but somehow it made me sad to think that quite a few adults are in need of these props too.

And they didn't even address one of the really bad mistakes: the use of ' in plural nouns (the boy's have gone home).

[Sasha Distan]

the only one i ever fall foul of is the it's/its; because i hate apostrophes.

[Thorn Wilde]

Lol! I love The Oatmeal, and this is one of my favourites.

 

I want to know why the graphic for It's and its says riding a wolverine but the damn critter's a manatee.

 

If you read the 'it's' bit carefully, you'll find that the speech bubble says, 'It's not fair that Randy gets to ride a wolverine to school, but I have to ride this stupid manatee.'

[scotchirish87]

the only one i ever fall foul of is the it's/its; because i hate apostrophes.

Those are frustrating because "its" breaks the rule of using 's for possession, which seems to me like it should have priority over a contraction.

[Sasha Distan]

Those are frustrating because "its" breaks the rule of using 's for possession, which seems to me like it should have priority over a contraction.

I'm so glad somebody agrees with me. damn grammar.

[Irritable1]

It's not all grammar, it's English. I'm told Hindi doesn't have issues like this.

[C J]

Ya, thers lots of wheys to mess up spelling.  If yoo ain't carefull sumone will got madd at yoo.  Really though, when your writing a story it's not that important.  I bet there are mistakes in every book there is.  The most important thing to know about story writing is how to develop characters and plots.  You know that people don't speak proper English, so a story isn't supposed to be writin properly either.

[Sasha Distan]

Ya, thers lots of wheys to mess up spelling.  If yoo ain't carefull sumone will got madd at yoo.  Really though, when your writing a story it's not that important.  I bet there are mistakes in every book there is.  The most important thing to know about story writing is how to develop characters and plots.  You know that people don't speak proper English, so a story isn't supposed to be writin properly either.

 

Agreed. I mean, i always do my best, and so does my team, to make sure we get all the errors out of a manuscript before it goes to publishing, but mistakes happen. After all, even something as over indulged as the 4th Harry Potter book went to press with major errors.

[Aditus]

Nobody is perfect but I aim to be. (more or less successful). When I'm tired I always do the know/now thing. Grrrr

[C J]

Writing fiction isn't about perfection, it's about getting people to read your story.  If your not getting readers then your writing isn't good.  Here's a link to an article that explains some things all writers need to know.  Like it says in this article, the best writers are avid readers.  If you don't read a lot, your not going to be that good of a writer.  Here, go read it.....

 

http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/get-published-sell-my-work/give-em-what-they-want-excerpt

 

You should bookmark this website and read more of it.  You can never read, or know, too much!

 

I suggest going to their home page and checking out the stuff there.  They have a contest going on, and subscribers get a free download.  Hey, if your going to write, do it right!

Edited June 7, 2014 by Ghostboy

[Timothy M.]

Hey, if your going to write, do it right!

 

I'm sorry to be a nitpicker, but this is absolutely not the thread to make the your / you're mistake three times in one post

[Thorn Wilde]

Ya, thers lots of wheys to mess up spelling.  If yoo ain't carefull sumone will got madd at yoo.  Really though, when your writing a story it's not that important.  I bet there are mistakes in every book there is.  The most important thing to know about story writing is how to develop characters and plots.  You know that people don't speak proper English, so a story isn't supposed to be writin properly either.

 

Gaiman's law: If an author walks into a book shop and opens a copy of one of his books onto a random page, he will invariably discover a typo.

 

That said, I have to respectfully disagree. It's true that people often don't speak proper English, and as such dialogue does not have to adhere to as strict rules as narrative, and it is also true that the standards for fiction are somewhat looser and freer than for academic texts, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't aim for perfection when writing my narrative. Writing is a craft, and it doesn't matter how well developed your characters and plots are if your narrative isn't interesting and understandable. Grammar exists for a reason, and it's not just to give kids a hard time in school. Authors of fiction are not exempt from the rules of good writing, and I will put a book down if the narrative is messy or boring, or if the grammar and spelling is appalling, unless there's a really good plot-related reason for it.

[C J]

Gaiman's law: If an author walks into a book shop and opens a copy of one of his books onto a random page, he will invariably discover a typo.

 

That said, I have to respectfully disagree. It's true that people often don't speak proper English, and as such dialogue does not have to adhere to as strict rules as narrative, and it is also true that the standards for fiction are somewhat looser and freer than for academic texts, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't aim for perfection when writing my narrative. Writing is a craft, and it doesn't matter how well developed your characters and plots are if your narrative isn't interesting and understandable. Grammar exists for a reason, and it's not just to give kids a hard time in school. Authors of fiction are not exempt from the rules of good writing, and I will put a book down if the narrative is messy or boring, or if the grammar and spelling is appalling, unless there's a really good plot-related reason for it.

 

OK, if you want perfect grammar in your story go for it.  I doubt that perfection makes any difference to readers.  Of course a story needs to be understandable and interesting, but it doesn't need to be perfect.  Readers want a good story, not an example of perfection.  Yes, grammar is a good thing, but it doesn't need to be perfect to be understood.  Words are often used in combinations that don't comply with the rules, like in poetry, but they convey an idea, and that's what the goal of story writing is in the end.

 

I like proper grammar and spelling, but I don't need it above all other things in order to appreciate whatever I might be reading.  I think an author who is able to be creative in the way they write is going to be more successful than one who strives to follow the rules.  If a story's success depended so much on grammatical perfection then it wouldn't be so difficult to write a best seller. 

 

People read stories for the same reason they go to a movie.  They want to "see" the story, and when you read your seeing pictures in your mind.  That makes grammar and spelling less important, and imagination more important.  I can describe a scene in a lot of ways, but most of them aren't going to be that interesting.  It's the ones that create a strong image in the readers mind that are successful, not the ones that conform most closely to the rules.

[C J]

I'm sorry to be a nitpicker, but this is absolutely not the thread to make the your / you're mistake three times in one post

 

OK, nitpick if you want.  The fact is you understood exactly what I was saying, so the mistake didn't make any difference other than to give you something to comment on.

 

You should become an editor for Thorne, he's very picky about his grammar and spelling.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Ghostboy

[Timothy M.]

the mistake didn't make any difference other than to give you something to comment on.

 

Yes it did, it made me focus more on the mistakes than the content of your post.

 

Perfection isn't necessary, but too many mistakes in grammar and spelling may obscure the meaning or break the flow of reading. It will also annoy a proportion of your readers and ultimately sow doubts about your skills as a writer - at least if the mistakes are consistent and display a lack of knowledge of the written language. Plus it raises the suspicion of the writer disrespecting his work and his audience if he or she cannot make the effort to avoid confusing you're with your or their / there / they're.

 

It's like saying the skills of the painter are less important if the subject of the painting is interesting and meaningful. I enjoy reading not just for the content but also for clever or beautiful phrases. I often return to stories and books to relive the thrill of a particular sentence or paragraph which captured an important moment in just the right words or unusual wording.

 

Edited for mistakes

Edited June 17, 2014 by Timothy M.

[C J]

Yes it did, it made me focus more on the mistakes than the content of your post.

 

Perfection isn't necessary, but too many mistakes in grammar and spelling may obscure the meaning or break the flow of reading. It will also annoy a proportion of your readers and ultimately sow doubts about your skills as a writer - at least if the mistakes are consistent and display a lack of knowledge of the written language. Plus it raises the suspicion of the writer disrespecting his work and his audience if he or she cannot make the effort to avoid confusing you're with your or their / there / they're.

 

It's like saying the skills of the painter is less inportant if the subject of the painting is interesting and meaningful. I enjoy reading not just for the content but also for clever or beautiful phrases. I often return to stories and books to relive the thrill of a particular sentence or paragraph which captured an important moment in just the right words or unusual wording.

 

If you read my previous post you'll see what I'm talking about.  I'm not saying grammar and spelling aren't important, I'm saying there are more important things.  I think if you focus more on the creative part of writing you're going to have a better story.  If you focus on perfection you might get an award from an English teacher.

 

Let's do some nitpicking while we're at it.  You wrote:

 

It's like saying the skills of the painter is less inportant if the subject of the painting is interesting and meaningful.

 

The spelling isn't perfect and the grammar isn't right either.  I don't particularly care though because you communicated your point.  In other words, nothing was lost because of the errors.

[Irritable1]

 

The spelling isn't perfect and the grammar isn't right either.  I don't particularly care though because you communicated your point.  In other words, nothing was lost because of the errors.

 

As a reader, I tend to agree with you, when I'm reading the work of novice writers. I don't quibble over your/you're or affect/effect, apart from the inevitable hiccup I feel in my reading flow. I'm not going to nitpick too much: I've worked with learning-disabled people when I was younger, and I've workshopped with people for whom English was a VERY foreign second language, and I've found that in both cases there could be an excellent narrative to be gleaned from fractured writing. But I wouldn't go too far even there, because I am an excellent decoder (and so, I'm guessing, are you) and it's not clear to me that every reader is able to strain as far as I am, even if they want to. And I hate to see creative artists lose an audience.

 

As a writer, I couldn't disagree  with you more. To say that language does not matter that much to a writer as long as the meaning is clear, is to say, in effect, that it is ok for an artist to work with a bad or blunt tool because you can figure out his or her intention well enough. Well, for a serious writer, that isn't good enough. You and I, the reading consumers, have no right to decide for the artist that she's been good enough. A serious writer strives to be clearer, better, more descriptive, to always convey more meaning more clearly and elegantly. To shut down the refinement of your creative process at the point where it's good enough for enough people... that's not the mark of successful creation. And it's a little bit arrogant too, for me to decide that a writer has so few concepts to convey that a 9th grade writing level is "good enough" for me as his reader. How the heck do I know what he's got inside him, if he doesn't have the tools to tell me?

Edited June 17, 2014 by Irritable1

[Zombie]

I'm sorry to be a nitpicker, but this is absolutely not the thread to make the your / you're mistake three times in one post

OK, nitpick if you want.  The fact is you understood exactly what I was saying, so the mistake didn't make any difference other than to give you something to comment on.

 

Ghostboy may be outnumbered on GA but he does have friends here...

http://www.killtheapostrophe.com/

 

Maybe this is about context - if you're writing free-to-read then readers can be expected to be more tolerant provided they're given a page-turner, but pay-to-read creates a whole new level of expectation and demand for "value", and non-compliance with expected "quality" standards will likely give rise to dissatisfaction via complaints, irate posts or refund demands

 

I'm also interested to know what happens in GA members' non-English speaking countries - are there also guerrilla wars to topple the grammarians or is this mostly an English thing?

 

 

 

.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Zombie

[C J]

My point is simple.  People don't expect perfection in grammar and spelling, they expect an engaging story.  Of course they are going to hate reading a story full of mistakes, and I'm not saying otherwise.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me either.  I could repeat my previous posts here but you can back up and read them if your really interested. 

 

I can say with certainty that a story will not sell on the basis of it's spelling and grammar, it will sell on the basis of the quality of the story itself.  Being precise is fine, but being creative and using words in ways that are engaging and amusing is what writing stories is about.  That is why there are so few authors making a living writing.  A lot of people want to be authors because there's some kind of public perception of authors being special.   The few who become selling authors certainly don't get there because they have perfect grammar. 

 

Anyway, I said what I had to say, and whether anyone agrees or not I'm not in the mood to debate it any longer.  Good luck with your writing, and remember to do it your way. 

[Irritable1]

Agghhhh, I can't get quotes to work on this machine.  Zombie I've linked in the resources topic to an a amazon searchable copy of Garners American Usage, and you can page to an overview of the last century's fight between the prescriptive and descriptive approaches to English grammar. I had no idea about any of this till last week when I started to look for a prescriptive guide by Geoffrey Pullum. It's fascinating. It feels really weird to me to have ended up on the prescriptive side.  I don't know if other languages have been hit by the revolution in linguistics in the same way, but I have a friend I'm going to ask about it.

Edited June 18, 2014 by Irritable1

[The Pecman]

Agreed. I mean, i always do my best, and so does my team, to make sure we get all the errors out of a manuscript before it goes to publishing, but mistakes happen. After all, even something as over indulged as the 4th Harry Potter book went to press with major errors.

 

I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice that! My theory was that J.K. Rowling was so big at that point, the publisher grew afraid of changing even a semicolon from her manuscript. As a result, there were all kinds of run-on sentences, disconnected dependent clauses, a bunch of clumsy stuff... none of which affected the first three books. I also think they were trying to rush the book out because she had turned it in late, and they had to make a sales date.

 

I can remember a time when no hardback book would ever have typographic errors or grammatical problems, back in the day when publishers would have no fewer than six proofreaders tackle the manuscript before and after typesetting. Those days are gone. My favorite is when I see misspellings in movie credits! Totally ridiculous. 

[Zombie]

Agghhhh, I can't get quotes to work on this machine.  Zombie I've linked in the resources topic to an a amazon searchable copy of Garners American Usage, and you can page to an overview of the last century's fight between the prescriptive and descriptive approaches to English grammar. I had no idea about any of this till last week when I started to look for a prescriptive guide by Geoffrey Pullum. It's fascinating. It feels really weird to me to have ended up on the prescriptive side.  I don't know if other languages have been hit by the revolution in linguistics in the same way, but I have a friend I'm going to ask about it.

 

Grammar wars go back much further. English grammar rules were developed as a way to teach Latin because only the plebs spoke English. And no-one was going to waste their time trying to codify rules for common low-lifes living in hovels Fact is it was those "common" people who invented and shaped early English according to their own will. It was only from the late 1400s that "rules" of grammar, and which words to use and how to spell them, were shaped up by printers, like Caxton, of the first books to be written in English. And they only did it so they could open up their market beyond regional dialects in order to maximise sales and shift more product From that time there have been battles and skirmishes over who's "right" and which "rules" are correct and more recently, since the first OED, whether dictionaries should prescribe correct usage or describe actual usage.

 

So you could say that rules of grammar and spelling have always been driven by the publishing industry, while the "common" people have just gone their own way, changing words and language to suit them. And that's just as true today with texting and tweets where non-standard language becomes new norms and printers rules are ignored. It's an important difference from French where academics believed they had the right to control language. Yeah, and look where that got them

 

And then there's American spellings...