#why your excuses for your poor grammar are bs

[ringo-ichigo]

An Essay Concerning Grammar for the Aspiring Writer

I’ve seen an attitude spreading in the writing community lately. It is degrading on many levels to the writing industry as a whole and particularly to editors. This attitude is the belief that you don’t need to have good grammar to write. It is patently false and I will explain why now.

Firstly, we must examine what writing is meant to do. Writing of any type is a means of communication. We use it to express ideas on the page. Now what does grammar have to do with this? Grammar is the rules of the road so to speak. It is the foundation upon which you build. So shoddy grammar makes for poor communication. Poor grammar can cause your point to become muddled.

Take antecedents. If you say, “Sally hit Jen, and she regretted it,” your reader will become confused. The antecedent for “she” in this case is Jen. However, it doesn’t make sense why Jen would regret being hit. It makes far more sense for Sally to regret the strike, yet what you have written does not communicate that. This is just one example. There are many others such as tense changes making the timing unclear or incorrect forms of words causing issues. These all weaken your writing as you no longer are able to convey your message without confusion. No one wants to be confused and have to reread your writing in order to comprehend it.

Now, I can hear some protesting “But this author says you don’t have to be perfect at grammar to be a writer!” To which I will say, yes, he’s correct in a way. You can break the rules and still be a good writer. Shocking, I know. The issue is that you must know the rules first in order to break them. What do I mean? Simple. In order to use this writing technique, it must be done with a purpose like I just did above with the fragment. I did it to emphasize the word and to be an example. I had a purpose to it. But if you do not understand the rules in the first place, you have no hope of choosing the proper time to break them. Instead of enhancing your writing, poor grammar will weaken your writing as it will come across as ignorance or laziness instead of competence. Not to mention, it will draw the attention to the errors instead of to your skill with the pen. Remember, the nail that sticks out is the one that is beaten down first.

Specifically, run-ons will always weaken your writing, never strengthen it. The problem with run-ons and comma splices is they can always be broken into smaller, stronger sentences. When you break them, they also become easier to read and more impactful to read. No longer does the reader start questioning where the end of this sentence is. He can focus on what is happening instead of the glaring mistake.

Now let’s talk about why you need to fix it now while you’re still newer and earlier in the story rather than later. I share this from personal experience: it is easier to do it now than wait. If you wait, you will only create more work for yourself. Run-ons and comma splices require you to rework sentence structures entirely, forcing you to rewrite entire sections to fix one error sometimes. If you’re particularly egregious on these types of cascading errors, this could entail completely scrapping your work and starting over anew. I’m sure you’re already going, “But… I do this all the time. I’ve written six chapters and they’re all ten pages apiece. That’s sixty pages to rewrite!” Yes, you are correct. It’s a daunting task sometimes to admit that you must scrap everything and start fresh. But it is better and easier to fix these bad habits now when there is less on the page than to plough ahead and create an even larger amount of work.

Stopping and fixing errors now is better not only for the amount of work, but also because you will start to recognize patterns. You may find that you split infinitives constantly or always forget to place commas after certain dependent clauses. This will allow you to course correct early on and keep an eye out in the future for this. This way, when you go through a day’s writing to proofread for major errors, you can also look for these repetitive pitfalls and fix them. Not only that, but if you keep these in mind as you write, you will catch yourself before you commit them and eventually you may even find you have broken the habit. You’ve created less proofreading for yourself, improved your ability to communicate, and saved yourself time all at once. All because you took the time to consider good grammar.

It is time now to shift away from writing as communication, and focus on it more as an industry. Many want to write. Many try to enter this industry; many fail. Writing is a competitive industry. In a way, you are in an arms race of talent. Who can improve their talent and make it stand out the best? Thousands submit their works yearly to publishing companies and yet out of these thousands only a dozen or less actually manage to get published. Why? Simply put, writing is about outshining others and gambling chances. The only way to be noticed is to show the company you are worth investing time and effort into your work. This means you must show promise as a writer.

However, as I showed earlier, poor grammar can get in the way of your talent and communication abilities. You have hamstringed yourself before the race even began. When others have worked hard and put their best forward, you’ve left your glaring grammatical errors in your piece. Yours is difficult to read due to its errors, while the others have polished their pieces to near perfection. Would you rather read something hard to comprehend or something easy to comprehend? I prefer the latter, and most companies will as well. Minor and occasional issues are fine. But every other sentence being a run-on or comma splice? These are unacceptable.

This isn’t the only issue though. If you’re submitting to a publisher, the companies are run by professionals. Poor grammar is not only crippling your writing. It’s actively spitting in the face of a publisher when they see it. Grammatical errors come across as unprofessional. It conveys laziness as it seems you didn’t even try to polish this manuscript or take a second look at it before submitting. Bad grammar can indicate that you either have a lack of beta readers or at best, that you ignore their advice. Considering proper grammar is taught in schools, it also comes across as you being unwilling to learn and grow. Both of these mean that you cannot stomach critique, and thus any advice they might have to make you publishing quality is wasted. If you are too lazy to take it, it does them no good. If you are too stubborn to admit flaws, it does them no good. Why should they bother working with you if you can’t do the basics required of the job? Into the trash with your manuscript.

You don’t get an editor from a company when you submit your piece. You get an editor once the company has decided you are worth the gamble required to sell your book. An editor is there to help you take the final steps to get to a professional quality of manuscript. The company has to sink time and money into preparing your book for publishing. There’s no guarantee it’ll get the money back either. Books flop frequently, and the publisher can only have so many flops before they shut down. Sending in an error-ridden manuscript is like showing up to an interview to be a lawyer’s intern in a bikini and flip flops. You have come to the company poorly prepared and unprofessionally attired. Why should they bother with you? On an aside: you can hire an agent who will do the hard work of shopping for a publisher for you. Unfortunately, they too check your manuscript for grammar issues and may refuse the job if your piece is need of serious grammatical revision.

Not to mention, this attitude of “My future editor will fix it” is disrespectful to editors. They have better things to do than attempt to fix your grammar. Their job description is not “teach poor writers grammar.” That is your English teacher’s job and no one else’s. Your editor will likely have several other projects they’re working on in addition to yours. If they have to spend all their time correcting your grammar because you didn’t bother to put in the extra effort to correct it personally, you are wasting your editor’s time and effort. Your beta can at times fill in the role of grammar teacher, but it should not be his primary role to go through your works and point out your egregious number of run-ons. Finally, it is not your critics’ jobs to teach you how to fix your errors. It is one person’s job to learn how to fix your grammatical errors: yours.

Not to mention an editor won’t coddle your feelings. They will critique you, and it won’t be gentle. You will be expected to take their critiques as a professional and not throw a fit or defend your choice. If you are showing an inability to accept a random stranger’s critique without losing your cool now, how can you think “Oh, I’ll be able to handle it then.” You have none of the tools, none of the experience, none of the grace to handle it any better then because you have refused to develop them now. The time to build up that ability is now when you’re still learning to write, not later down the road. Stop procrastinating and start learning to turn off your insta-rage and listen.

Critique comes whether you are ready or not. If you are posting something to the public for them to read—even a first draft, you are saying to anyone who reads it, “This is what I consider acceptable for public consumption.” This is what you’ve set as your standard of what is your best work to the public’s eye. If that work contains swaths of grammatical errors, the public will comment eventually. It may take time, but someone with a critical eye will find your piece. They will likely comment, and if your grammar is so atrocious that it took labor to understand your writing, they will be nasty about it. They won’t care about your feelings because you have wasted their time and effort and given them nothing for it but a migraine. At that point, it won’t matter how good or bad your story idea is. It will not be able to outshine the errors hanging over it like a fog. Bad grammar will overpower your talent every single time.

With the internet, it connects you not only to possible reviewers but also to agents and editors. They can and will look into your past if you get past initial rejection. Agents will look into your websites. They will find your temper tantrum over those poor critiques. Those will color their opinion on your work because they’ve now seen what you will be like on this project. No one wants to have to fight at work. No one wants to bring that amount of stress into his life. Agents and editors will see your poor behavior and go, “That writer isn’t ready for this emotionally yet.” You will be rejected, and if you’re lucky, they might tell you why.

Lastly, I wish to impart this knowledge to you: loving writing is not enough. It isn’t. You can love writing all you want, but if you cannot listen to criticism and grow from it, you will never improve. You will always be suffocating in the valley instead of joining those on the mountaintop. Those people are the ones who took the time and spent the effort to better their writing through grammar and feedback.  You will always be looking up to them and wondering how they are so good and why you’ve plateaued. As someone who has been writing since she was eleven, I can tell you that I’ve had people critique my writing. I didn’t whine about poor reviews either. I understood, even at that age, that I had to listen. I posted my works knowing they might get bad reviews and knew that I would have to grow a thick skin and sift through the ones of “u suk” and “wow that was bad” to find the “Your writing lacks description” types. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t saying how to improve precisely. A critique doesn’t need to say “if you change x, then it will fix y.” A critique can be as simple as “You have an issue with run-ons.” Why? It pointed out the flaw. You can now locate the issue and fix it. Nor is it the critic’s job to teach you grammar. As I pointed out though, if your grammar is unreadable, expect that critique to be harsh enough to remove paint. You offered what could’ve been a five star meal and gave them your half-chewed leftovers instead. And who wouldn’t be angry at that?

Sources/Further Reading

Sources about grammar in general:

http://ask.dailygrammar.com/Why-is-grammar-important.html

https://www.clearvoice.com/blog/yes-good-grammar-still-important-heres/

http://www.witslanguageschool.com/NewsRoom/ArticleView/tabid/180/ArticleId/279/Is-grammar-important.aspx

http://www.startribune.com/top-10-reasons-you-should-learn-to-use-proper-grammar/348141711/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-b-bradshaw/why-grammar-is-important_b_4128521.html

Sources about the writing industry:

https://blog.reedsy.com/perfect-submission-tips-from-a-publisher/

https://thinkwritten.com/6-tips-for-submitting-your-manuscript/

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/pubtips

http://www.ian-irvine.com/on-writing/what-publishers-hate/

[abitunexpected]

Radical feminists are trying to eradicate an entire section of humanity but ignore the similarities of their own hate group and nazis?😂 Arent trans ppl the one demanding more "inclusive" vocabulary just because the minority of people feel umcofortable with the word "woman"? Werent trans ppl the one nailing a dead rat to women rape relief shelter? Werent it trans ppl who use the popularity of the gender identity fad to get into women prisons and rape women there? Arent trans ppl not the ones expecting tolerance and acceptance for every bs they come up with or otherwise the person will be called out, cancelled for transphobia?

You surely are very uneducated on this topic, not mentioning how brain rotting it is to compare feminists to a facist systematically organzied politcal group that LITERALLY MURDERED PEOPLE. Comparing them to feminists that are most of the times just gender critical to them is beyond idiocy as you never heard of tErFs physically harming anyone.

Grab a book, kiddo

There are more people than women in society, so yes of course we want language that's more inclusive.

There has literally never been any proof that that incident has anything to do with the trans community or the person who made the "RATs: Rats Against Terfs" post that it was rebloged from, nor was there any proof that the picture was taken after the original post was made or that it was even the door to a rape shelter.

Gender identity has been proven by multiple scientific studies and why the fuck would I want to go to prison? It seems terf logic is "I think they have a penis so that means they are going to rape me automatically" because that's not how it works.

Although you don't understand that there are more than two genders and that they aren't limited by your toxic beliefs, much like a four year old not understanding the inner workings of a jet engine, the lack of understanding doesn't stop it from existing.

I'm certainly more educated on the subject than you are

I'm not comparing feminists to nazis, I'm comparing terfs, a group who hides behind the idea that they are feminists, which they aren't because feminism stands for equality not the lack of it. The idol of your beloved j.k.rowling: maya forstater literally signed a petition to "eradicate transgenderism" now ignoring the poor grammar, that sounds like genocide to me. This of course is without pointing out that you have hardly complained when American politicians say they want to eradicate the trans youth.

Ah yes, because "I like to debate your existence" is a perfectly fine excuse for transphobia

[aimakyu]

It’s been almost a year.

In the last few days i’ve been thinking: but The Ssum? Is there somebody who remembers it? I wanted to share with you what i’ve been thinking lately.

(Before that, 1) sorry if i did some grammar mistakes, english isn’t my first language, it’s almost midnight and i’m really tired, i just wanted to get this out of my mind. 2) i don’t want to offend anyone, this is only my opinion. 3) thanks if there is someone who will read it till the end, and i hope to read your opinions on the matter!)

Let’s begin.

I understand that they are prioritizing Mystic Messenger with new contents (the recent V’s AE and Rika’s BS + they are probably working on Saeran’s AE and who knows what else), but the point is that they aren’t even updating us about anything.

Are they planning on releasing it at all?

Last update we had was last august (2018) at Otakon convention. Under that video is written “the official launch is to be expected at the end of this year” (you can find the video on their youtube channel).

Why should i read the info box of a video instead of a post on tumblr/twitter??

They said time and time again that they aren’t really good at advertising/be social(?), but 1) they are improving a lot, 2) is it really so difficult to write something about it? I would be okay with anything.

They will never release it? Okay. They will release it within the year? Good. They are working on it, maybe planning on release it next year, but want to prioritize MM now? Perfect.

I understand if during the process they met some difficulties, it’s totally normal, but you can’t announce a releasing day, then take a step back, announce a beta for testing, say that you want to work on it a little more, then nothing.

I’m sincere, i don’t know a thing about marketing and i don’t know how a company works, but i think that it’s our right to know what’s going on. I repeat, they didn’t just announce a game, we had a beta that some people tested, and they gave us a release date. I think highly of Cheritz, i love MM and i always read good things about Dandelion and Nameless, that’s why the “we don’t know how to be social” or whatever is a poor excuse for me.

For conclusion, the only thing i want is an update, a simple post of two lines, to tell us what’s going on. Nothing more, nothing less.

I only saw some snippets from the game here on tumblr, and i loved it, it seemed like a really good game. I’m not angry or mad, just a little disappointed.

I hope nobody take this in the wrong way, i just needed to get it out of my mind. Now i’ll go to sleep, goodnight and thanks to everyone who read this long post.