This one is dedicated to the international writers Those, like me, who come from a non-english nation and is writing fanfics in a secondary language. I wanted to discuss some of the problems you can run into, which obviously will depend on the languge. I for example, am a little uncomfortable with compound words like "baby carriage", I tend to wanna hyphen them in my first drafts, even tough it isn't necessery. Cus in my native language we'd simply write it as one word, "barnvagn" (Children + cart)

I'm a native speaker, and I hyphenate and compound words more often than most native speakers do. For words specific to the pony universe, like "forehoof," I don't think there's one right answer. Write what you like. For other words, the safest bet is to use a spellchecker and look in a dictionary if you're not sure.

It also helps to have a native suggest alternatives. There's nothing wrong with "baby carriage," but in my dialect (American, Boston area) that sounds formal. We usually say "stroller." I think Brits usually say "pram."

A trick I've learned from students of Japanese is to go to Googlefight and compare two phrases to see which is the most common.

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By the way, you write like a native except for:
wanna hyphen them - wanna hyphenate them
and is writing - and are writing
Cus - 'Cuz

295028 When it comes to the equetrian terms, that's almost a whole other debate. Hyphenating can be a good indicator that the word in question is a non-standard part of english and not an exceedingly odd spelling error, a sort of "we meant to do that" I tend to not do tha,t cus after reading fanfics for a while, you get so used to somepony and everypony that it can even slip into casual dialouge if you're not careful

Your suggestion about googlefight was a really good one, though. Its kinda like a more rigorous version of what I already do when I am unsure, which is to google both variants and note roughly how often and at what sites they appear. If I get a lot of newspaper articles, it's prolly fine. If I get a lot of forum posts, it's probably at least informal.

295036

You missed an apostrophe. "It's kinda like a more..."

I've edited for a lot of people who don't speak English natively. A large problem I see in almost every single fanfiction (actually, this happens to native speakes too) is redundancies and the abuse of the words "just" and "only".

Redundancies happen because they're so focused on the translation that they forget they already said something or they don't know enough vocabulary.

Only and just... well that's translation I think. Not much anyone can do about that.

There's my two cents, don't steal it.

295044
Oh, I forgot about the aphostrophes, my mortal enemies was/were is something I screw up al lthe time too, I have a -damned chart up at all times when writing, and I STILL get it wrong half the time...

Articles! Effing articles. How do they even work? X_X

English isn't my native language, so let's see...I tend to be a super grammar freak, though I don't know why. Although after living in America for 14 years, I suppose that's to be expected.

My main enemy is the blasted comma and semicolon. The comma usage is different in Icelandic writing convention than in English and it's taken me ages to get that thing near correct for English but I still think I slip up at times. And semicolon use is nearly unheard of in my native language except in rare instances. It's either comma or a period. The spell and grammar check in word is great to get the most glaring errors but not always the more subtle ones.

Ugh, my problems are apostrophes and commas...

billybob

Well this is the oldest thread of this group I can find.

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:O

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