Grammars and When They're Important · 3:19am Jan 10th, 2015
Okay, so, I'm a really good editor. Like, not "I went to college and came out with a BS in English" good, but "I have a high school diploma and no education past that, but I have incredible talent in spotting errors" good. I am particularly good at spotting grammatical issues and reading what I refer to as sentence "flow," which is how the sentence would read out loud based on spelling, grammar and punctuation, but is an internal monologue that is constantly reading back to me in my head. It makes me really good at editing everything, from everyday conversation to simple switcharoos in letters within a word to debugging computer programs to incorporating rules for British English, not just American English. It's an awesome talent to have, and one that I certainly don't get to share with others often enough.
It's just as important to have the talent as it is to know when to use the talent, though. Not everyone deserves to be corrected or made to feel like they said something wrong unless the meaning is misinterpreted. If the conversation becomes difficult to understand, yes, you should probably take note that you're not understanding what it is that they're saying or doing. If you comprehend what they're trying to tell you, you probably shouldn't sweat the small stuff because it doesn't help anyone with anything.
Now, stories are a different matter entirely. A story's express purpose for existence is for entertainment value. No one is interested in critiquing a 5-year-old's splattered paint on a canvas; they're interested in the emotion, the expression invoked. A careless painter is like a careless writer, and their expression can be marred by poor grammar. An editor exists to help the writer invoke the expression that they are aiming to invoke, to help coax their muse from its mold and give it the life that it so desperately wants, so that it may be seen of those who wish to see it, and they may nod their heads and say, "Ah, I see what they were going for here. This is beautiful."
One thing that artists don't have to worry about being critiqued on is their talking to people about everyday activities and living. The artist is not expected to be particularly verbose or well-spoken, since his talent lies in the evoking of feelings based on what he created.
Written art is much the same way. The writer doesn't need to be particularly verbose, as long as the image makes it through; what's important for the editor is to see the image the writer is trying to project and clean up the quality so that the image is clearer to readers. Editing is crucial in stories because no one wants to look at a badly drawn picture.
One place where editing makes no sense is in everyday matters. You don't see Pierce Brosnan on the street and expect him to act like James Bond. You don't see Mark Hamill at a convention and expect him to act like Luke Skywalker. You don't see William Shatner on a movie set and expect him to act like Captain Kirk--unless, of course, they're filming the original Star Trek, at which point you expect him to personify the art that he is creating.
So, where is proper grammar unimportant, then? Well, this blog post here is a prime example of where grammar isn't important. It's like a conversation between two people on the street; unless one of them has autism or OCD or some form of disorder that causes them to be irreconcilably annoying when it comes to social skills, chances are neither one of them gives a shit if their friend uses the words "ain't," "alright," or "breh."
It's all a matter of judging where and when something matters. If you can't determine properly if grammatical mistakes are and are not acceptable depending on the context of the situation, you probably shouldn't remark on it in the first place. It's part of the reason why I get angry at users for making three tiny, negligible nitpicks on an atrocious story, or why I get angry at users for correcting other users whatsoever in blog posts and group threads.
What's most important outside of a story is making sure that what the person says is understood. That is the strict guideline; if they write everything phonetically, as long as you understand what they're telling you, it's not really all that important to tell them, "You are bad at grammar."
What's most important inside a story is flow. If you can't see the flow, no amount of training in the English language is going to help you catch every necessary error. Don't even bother with the small stuff if you can't see the big stuff plaguing it; focus on more important things, like plot holes, poor characterization, or dumb jokes. There's no halfway when it comes to grammar because either it flows or it doesn't.
So, a list of basic rules:
1. If you're going to fix grammar issues, fix all of them. No one deserves half-assed efforts.
2. Remember where you're trying to fix these grammar issues. If it's not in a story and you got what they were saying, it's not an issue.
And bottom line: Don't be an asshole just because someone isn't as gifted as you are with your native language. Not everyone is created equally in everything, and it's not your responsibility to make others feel bad because they aren't as much of a special snowflake as you in this subject.
that is why i refuse to edit people's stories.
Preaching it out man!
While I do a pretty decent job of keeping the syntax straight on my own stuff, I've never really felt compelled to call out other authors unless they're so far off the beam the only way they'll ever contact it again is if you hit them with it. (Disclosure: I rewrote that last clause twice, and still didn't like it that much.)
I'll pre-read, maybe. But I won't edit. I don't want to put myself in the position of thinking that I'm some sort of authority on the subject.
I don't believe I'll ever be able to agree with you entirely on one of these long blog posts because there are simply too many points where our opinions can diverge. I can easily find myself nodding along(metaphorically, I don't nod when I read, it's rather difficult) and really seeing how what your saying makes sense, and then by the next paragraph, or even line, shaking my head and saying, 'you poor, deluded fool'(that was both metaphor and exaggeration).
For example,
I don't agree with that at all. Better to fix some than none. While 10 is definitely the best score, getting 2 is still better than not doing anything and getting 0. Maybe in some cases it isn't, but in grammar fixing it is.
Another point I can make is one I've been thinking on a lot very recently, in that I'm going to assume you feel at least a tad bit superior to those whom point out every little mistake. At the very least, you are making this seem, regardless of whether it is or not, bad, which encourages others to feel superior for not doing it. And this is hypocritical because you're being superior for not feeling superior. Then one could say I'm being superior for saying it's bad to say it's bad to point out grammar errors, though to be honest if I'm being superior about anything it's about coming to this whole idea when others have not. But, is feeling superior really all that bad? If you fail to actually insult people, and instead raise them to a higher platform in which you encourage them to, keeping to given examples, to either use better grammar; not point out other mistakes; stop feeling superior.
Note: I felt like you were talking to me personally on a lot of your complaints about what I'd call 'grammar nazis'(although you never once used this term- care to explain?), of which my only explanation is that it feeling superior feels hella good.
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The reason I feel half-finished editing jobs don't help is because the sentence flow is still broken. If it doesn't read like a river in my head, it won't read like a river to anyone. Punctuation and grammar can really affect sentence flow, whereas misspellings just change how the words sound--which is important, but not as important as punctuation and grammar when it comes to the flow.
Fixing some errors means you still didn't fix the overarching issue with the sentence flow. It still reads like shit. No point in trying to fix shit if it's still shit in the end; then you're just wasting your breath making the shit feel slightly less like shit, while the actual issue--the sentence flow--is like a bunch of rocks right in the middle of the river. If you fix all the errors, the rocks disappear, but if you miss some, you'll still pop the raft. Unless you get rid of all the rocks, it's still highly dangerous to be taking an inflatable raft of interest down the story river.
Oh. Whoops. Not what I meant.
What I'm saying is, point out every little mistake in a story, because that's considered art and deserves to be critiqued as such. Be like Hoity Toity:
If it's shit, you say exactly what you're seeing. If you're going to go into detail, be exhaustive about what looks horrible (which he did not do in this case). Your job as a critic is to either state the obvious, or explain the obvious when it is not as obvious as you may have thought (i.e. review it).
On the other hand, when something is not shit and you see it as amazing, you call it like you see it. If they want details, you can provide them with the positives as necessary.
Be harsh if the story deserves it; if it's shitty art, like someone took a literal shit on a canvas and called it their masterpiece, tell everyone why that piece of shit is nothing but a piece of shit. Be appraising of the story as it deserves as well; if someone made a proper evoking of expression and feeling and weren't just slathering a page with words, take note of what was right and why you were able to appreciate it.
If someone asked Hoity Toity, "Why don't you like the first dresses?" and Hoity Toity said, "There's galoshes on one dress and baubles on another dress! You figure out the rest!" he wouldn't be considered a very good critic of the dresses. If he's going to review those dresses, he's going to explain, exhaustively, what was wrong with each of those dresses and why they failed in fashion sense. If he reviewed the second round of dresses, of course he'd dig into the positives and why he found them so wonderful.
Hoity Toity would be considered an unnecessary douche if he started calling out exhaustive lists of everything wrong with the outfits of the ponies in the crowd. He's supposed to be critiquing the outfits on the stage that he's being told to critique, not the outfits of the whispering ponies next to him talking about what their plans for lunch tomorrow are.
If a story, like a dress, is put on display and up for critique, you critique the shit out of it, and you don't hold back on your honest opinions and feelings ever. You critique all of it, which is why you decided you wanted to in the first place.
You don't, however, point out problems in blog post or a group thread without coming across as a prick. No one cares if you don't like their dress; they didn't ask you to tell them what was wrong with it in the first place, so your opinions on what's "wrong" with what they're wearing are unwelcome in that environment.
EDIT: Missed the last part.
I didn't use the term "grammar Nazi" because that's not a bad thing. You should pick apart sentence structure and poor prose in a story because it's necessary to tell the author why their art sucks, otherwise it's a hugbox and no one gets any better.
This definitely wasn't intended to address anything I've seen you doing; it was actually brought on by two guys wasting my time reading about a tense issue in a thread title. As if anyone gives a shit about a tense issue instead of the discussion topic. They were being unnecessarily critical of someone who wasn't making art.
There is another exception to this rule... If the Writer ASKS for the mistakes to be pointed out. Being a B student in English, and having always struggled with it... I appreciate my mistakes to be pointed out. Then People to point me to the rule that I messed up on. It hurts to see that I did something worth pointing out... But I know that by being corrected my skill will improve.
What is wrong in this sentence?
I've been known for my awful grammar
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I misunderstood what you were talking about, then. I assumed you talking about editing every mistake in a story, not in a sentence. Although I still disagree on the smaller scale- better to have a few mistakes, or a few rapids in the river, than to be completely incomprehensible that gets a reader hung up for five minutes trying to make heads or tails out of it or block your path in the river, even if having no mistakes or a completely smooth river is better still.
I didn't mean in a sense about pointing out in fics, I meant in the sense of blog posts and threads. The issues you were describing. In fics, they're helpful people doing a good deed. In blog posts and threads, they're grammar nazis. Nazi is definitely an exaggeration, but then I've never had a problem with comparing a minor slight to a much bigger slight as long as you're clear that you're exaggerating to make your point.
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What I'm saying is, if you're not good at spotting mistakes, you shouldn't find the three mistakes you do see and point them out, because there's still three dozen other mistakes that you're ignoring. If you don't fix all of it, you're not teaching anything, because the author now believes that a poorly constructed sentence is correct.
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Unless it carries over into a story, as long as I understand what you're saying, your grammar knowledge is irrelevant here.
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That's true. Legibility is more important than flow; if the thought is not communicated, that becomes the same problem that can be run into in group threads and blog posts, and I encourage correction on that point.
The part that I was referring to specifically is people who point out smaller mistakes--here's a great example of it:
They completely ignore the fact that the author used "proud" instead of "proudly" here. It breaks the sentence flow and harms the story overall, yet they specifically quote the sentence and suggest a way to fix a non-issue by moving some punctuation around--a matter of opinion based on their preferences for story prose, not a grammatical error. They completely ignore the grammar error!
My question here is, why is this person even trying at this point? If they're going to miss the important shit that breaks sentence flow, they can't be expected to be a reliable editor, or even a reliable proofreader. This isn't a question of legibility, but of being able to see and determine what's actually wrong, rather than what you may not like about the author's prose.
Oh, I see, people fixing grammar in blog posts and group threads being grammar Nazis. Yeah, I can see the reasoning there; a Nazi in this sense is someone who only allows perfection to exist and doesn't tolerate anything but perfect sentences. People who correct in daily life and in places that don't merit such things could be referred to as such; I prefer to just call them assholes.
An item I caught on Twitter last night suggested we replace "Grammar Nazi" with "Grammando," presumably for Godwinoid reasons. I'm not keen on either term myself.
2713752 Grammar Nazi 4 life man! Grammando just sound stupid and auto correct will turn it into Granada and Grammar Nazi just sounded more badass
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I admit, I never thought about the autocorrect implications. (Then again, I have a longstanding mistrust of
spearchuckersspellcheckers.)2714767 Plus if you're a Grammar Nazi, you can shoot anyone who oppose you with a 7.92X57mm Mauser round and heavy-duty shit such as:
42 cm Gamma Mörser
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/42_cm_Gamma_Mörser_AWM_A02560.jpeg/300px-42_cm_Gamma_Mörser_AWM_A02560.jpeg
38 cm Siegfried K (E)
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/38cmSiegfried.jpg/300px-38cmSiegfried.jpg
Schwerer Gustav
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/GeschützDora2.JPG/220px-GeschützDora2.JPG
21 cm Mörser 18
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/21cmMörser18FortSillRear2005.jpg/300px-21cmMörser18FortSillRear2005.jpg
8.8 cm KwK 43
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Tiger_II_mg_7800.jpg/300px-Tiger_II_mg_7800.jpg
8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37/41
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Flak18-36.jpg/300px-Flak18-36.jpg
I, as an editor, know that it can be monstrously infuriating when people start getting grammar corrections wrong. I am a major grammar Nazi (I was a Major, Keith went to a grammar school and Katelyn's a Nazi). And my pride dictates that I read my messages ten times through so I can be sure that my sentences, clauses, colons and pointless rants at the British government are all in order.
Sometimes it doesn't help that I'm always going off of the Queen's English (British English) and people who run entirely on American English feel that they need to correct me.
whats a grammer lmoa isnt that what u use 2 make smorez
Meh, I have a slightly less powerful talent of yours. I can see where the sentence goes bump and off a cliff, but if I'm not an editor, I'll activate my other talent, which is ignoring the shit out of stuff and autocorrecting stuff in my brain, so I can read the story pretty well as long as it has decent Grammar. Sadly these two come into conflict when I'm an editor. Oh well.
Heil Grammar.
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I feel like sometimes no one has any clue what I'm going on about with sentence flow when I mention it, but if there's an official name for the tempo of a sentence, I don't know it.
I like that. Grammar ties very closely into flow, so noticing the bumps is like noticing the errors.
Protip: When you aren't sure as to when is best to utilize semicolons and commas, just...put in...some...ellipses...as a...cop ou-uh...I mean...for dramatic...effect...