Apr
17th
2014
I just ... AUGGH! · 12:18pm Apr 17th, 2014
I thought I'd share this little chestnut, just because.
I was checking out some potential fics for YouTube readings from my feed. I came across this one: Those Who Hunt. The author asked for a critique from the group Authors Helping Authors. In amongst the response was this remark:
"Grammar score: I do not know grammar not do I care for it. I believe in flamboyant auvant gart writing so unless it's obviously an error like a misspelled word, I have no advice for you."
Head, meet desk. You two and going to be great friends.
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ObabScribbler · 323 views
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That's . . . wow.
Hey!!!. That's completely unfair...to your desk...not to mention your head!
If he's decided not to take his writing seriously, then that's his fault. As an artist, I can tell you that writing (at the very least grammar), can't be applied to an auvant garde style...a gentleman must say what he means or he can't mean what he says...
I'd just drop it and go onto something a little less headache inducing.
Are you kidding me..
Yay for flamboyant avant garde!
2018209 You spelled it incorrectly too... unless that was intentional.
My only response is a dose of laughter.
It takes skill to insult one language by mispelling in the course of insulting another language by disregarding its rules. Thats actually kind of admirable in terms of killing two birds with one stone.
Wow.
Ocab, you handled that pretty good all things considered.
I can't imagine what my deear editor would do if he encountered that.
2018213 No, that should be the correct French spelling qr unless Google lied to me...
...I did only get a -D in French back in highschool...
2018219 Oh wait! I see it now, my auto spell check changed "avant" to "auvant" which apparently is a word...
...gotta look that up now...
You are right about this for sure, scribbler.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel an intense need to bang my own head against my desk. See you after I wake up from my concussion
...It hurts.
I'm kinda impressed that they got "flamboyant" right. Even though I have no idea how that term is even applicable.
But I have to admit their spelling of auvant gart is certainly, um, auvant gart.
To be fair, this fandom is obsessive about the rules of grammar as a metric of the quality of a story. Obviously grammar is important to understand but there is a contingent in this fandom that treats the application of pretty obscure grammatical rules as a vital component of writing. I mean, I've had to go back and forth with editors in the past when I've violated rules of grammar in the name of free indirect discourse or creating a certain feeling in a sentence.
That said, giving a fuck about grammar (and spelling) is kind of how you present yourself professionally as a writer. So yeah... important.
...
Ryyyyyyte.
Okay... I know who to avoid now. Thanks for the heads-up.
I've seen this nonsense before... from know-nothings on Deviantart who can't draw, and so claim their art's ugliness is a "style".
Most ignorance is willful.
I can't....I have no...I don't even...That hurt my brain, I gotta go lie down.
How useful is "Authors helping Authors"? I could certainly use some assistance polishing up and "completing" my works.
2018509 I honestly can't really imagine any good time to mess up your grammar. There are some finicky rules here and there, some of which I follow very closely, but the only time I ever intentionally screw up my own grammar is when it's inside a speech tag or when I'm describing a thing outside of "prose" such as a picture or object. At the very least, I'd like to see an example of this just so I can see how to apply it, or avoid it.
2020317 It depends how rigorously you define grammar? Like, people usually don't bat an eyelash at sentence fragments, but they're not technically grammatical.
Like: "The noise was closer now. Inside the house." "Inside the house" isn't a sentence since it's missing both a verb and a subject, but it's easily parsed because it's "borrowing"/"echoing" the subject and verb of the previous sentence. It mirrors a character's thought process (it's the sort of construction you'd only use in first person or close third person) of making an observation and then interpreting.
First person/close third can do a lot of things like that because one of the main functions is writing prose that "sounds" like it's in a person's head. Which is like writing prose with the same looseness you'd use when writing dialogue, I suppose. So you know, omitting commas between the terms of a list or conjunctions eliminates a pause where we would expect them, which creates a sense of rushing thoughts.
Another weird one--I recently did some research suggesting that the correct way to punctuate action interrupting dialogue is like this:
"Look, just"--she stabbed at her plate with the fork--"let it go, okay?" (Well it should be an emdash dash and not 2 hyphens, but fimfic doesn't auto-convert)
Now I think that looks really ugly and would prefer not to use it on purely aesthetic reasons, but it appears to be in common usage, if not the preferred way of punctuating that sort of self-interruption. But to me it also looks like a really hard break in the dialogue (I mean that's not the best choice of dialogue anyway, just what sprang to mind). So I might prefer commas, especially if it's not a violent action you're describing:
"Hey, um," she fiddled with the curls of her hair, "can we talk?"
I mean neither of those sentences are amazing, and sometimes you might want to consider other possibilities than interrupting the dialogue. For instance you could do a dialogue tag with an action, e.g. "she said, fiddling with her hair," if you like that construction. That also creates a pause in the middle of the dialogue. Or you could put the action separate from the dialogue.
Anyway so some people might say that breaking up dialogue with commas is technically ungrammatical unless there's a dialogue tag, but to me there's no real barrier to understanding there, and the commas are less harsh and less attention-grabbing than dashes. So I've used that construction from time to time in my writing.
I dunno, things like that. Not disregarding grammar but letting the sound you want dictate structure and punctuation choice by paying attention to how the reader will parse things, rather than the rules as such.