Common Grammatical Errors

[Heavenli24]

I have to agree. Although my reasoning for it may be a bit non-grammatical. I was originally trained in theatre as an actor. Punctuation was the big, bold-faced clue as to how the author wanted the lines to be pronounced. Commas were a short breath. Periods a break in the thought. Ellipsis and hypens were "pregnant pauses." Semi-colons were treated the same as a sentence-ending period.

Punctuation marks in a script, to an actor, indicate the phrasing the author indended the lines to be delivered with. While that may or may not be grammatically correct, it does apply (to some degree) to fan fiction. Punctuation gives us the feeling of how the words should sound when spoken.

Kara

I think that this method is probably quite accurate. Whenever I'm writing a fic, whether it is speech or just description, I always read it aloud to myself to make sure it sounds right and that I have the correct punctuation in the right places - like imagining someone is reading the story to you.

One thing that I think people can miss is that if someone is addressing somebody else, you always need to put a comma (a pause)before saying their name - for example:

"Is it raining, Max?" where the person is asking Max if it is raining.

If there was no comma, it would read "It is raining Max?" and the person would be then asking if Max himself was raining (as in raining cats and dogs).

Anyway, that's just something I've noticed .


Heavenli24

[Fehrbaby]

Because these are the mistakes I've seen about 70% of authors on this site make, I wanted to recommend people take a look at this link:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/taralj ... ml?#cutid1

It is tips for dialogue punctuation, the use of proper nouns, etc

Christina

[littleroswell]

This is an awesome thread and I've learned a lot on it. I just wanted to point out that using CC (closed captioning) to learn how to spell anything is totally a bad idea. Most CC uh...things (for lack of a better word) use voice recognition technology so it spells what it hears. That's probably why someone said they saw their CC spell "Serena" or "Serina", "Surina". I know this because my TV automatically turns on the CC when I mute it and sometimes I read it just to crack myself up because if someone is talking fast, sometimes it will run the words together, leave out words, misspell words, use the wrong words, etc.

Also, as for the comma uses, along with the grammatical rules, I was told by a teacher that using commas help you to convey your message clearly.

Ex.
1. Woman without her man is lost. (No commas leaves room for the reader's interpretation. Not sure I spelled that right! LOL!)

2. Woman, without her, man is lost. (Implies that without a woman, man would be lost.)

3. Woman, without her man, is lost. (Implies that a woman is lost without a man by her side.)

Just a few observations.

Beth

[petitchou]

The first and third examples are correct. You can say "Woman without her man is lost."

Or "Woman, without her man, is lost." They mean exactly the same thing with, or without, punctuation. If you'd had a longer sentence or different example, perhaps you would need the commas.

The second? "Woman, without her, man is lost." Incorrect. Sentence fragment at the very least.

There are many good examples of problems on this thread, especially words that are commonly confused, i.e. affect-effect, to-too, they're-there-their, your-you're, its-it's (possessive vs. contraction), among numerous others. One of the things I see over and over and over again is incorrect use of conditional tense. Ex. "If Max were to say he knew Michael in another life, people would think he'd lost his mind." Not "If Max was . . . ." And pronoun-usage problems: "Neither of them was able to come to an agreement about the healing stones." Or "Neither Max nor Michael was able to come to an . . . ." Collectives nouns:"The crowd rose to its feet." Not "their feet." And the use of "myriad." Not "myriad of." Must "myriad."

Another is syntax. For example (the first thing that came to my mind being an old poem), in quoting the preface to William Blake's SofI/SofE, "I stained the water clear." Does the sentence mean I STAINED the water, which is clear? Or I stained the water CLEAR (with words, referring to the poet's)? It's purposely unclear because of lack of punctuation. It's the syntax of the sentence. You don't need commas all the time for a sentence to make sense. In fact, sometimes they're left out intentionally. The one I gave as ex. is certainly an old one--not one given to dialogue--but, hopefully, you get the meaning.


I love good fan fiction, and there is some really well-written stuff here; however, syntax and grammar (and, to an extent, diction) are problems for some writers. Content outweighs errors, though, for the most part.

[Lolita]

Okay, what the heck is up with this new paragraph style that fanfic authors are starting to use more and more? It's basically giving each short sentence it's own paragraph. For example:

I decided to go to the mall.

The mall was crowded.

Someone stepped on my toe and it hurt.

etc.

It's really starting to irritate me. How can a whole story be written in this style? From my understanding this style is used to emphasize certain shifts in a story, like focusing a spotlight. However, doesn't it lose it's effectiveness if the WHOLE story is written like this? Plus these sentences tend to be incomplete sentences. Isn't that grammatically wrong?

In my opinion, this is just sheer laziness (on the author's part). A good way to make your chapter longer than it really is.

I don't know.

Any opinions?

(BTW, the last 2 sentences were done deliberately. Just me being cheeky.)

[behrinthecity]

Lolita- I know what you mean... when I initially started writing I barely did that... but from the advice of my beta I have begun to use it more often-- where initially longer paragraphs are split into one or two sentence paras for ease of reading and yes at times further emphasis on points. I do agree that doing it too much does seem to defeat the purpose of using it as a means to emphasize a line... but in terms of making it easier for people to read through it's not that bad.

And about it being laziness to make the part look longer, at least for me that couldn't be further from the truth. It actually takes me more effort figuring out where to split them up and I'm not usually that concerned with the exact length of each of my parts-- just as long as it conveys what I want that part to convey.

(side note-- nice touch with your last two lines )

[Kzinti_Killer]

One thing that pops to mind...mainly because of a beta job that I did the other day...is the fact that people do not always speak in a grammatically correct manner. They trim words. They add non-standard contractions. They even occasionally slur words together, or make up entirely new ones on the fly. It's a very human thing to do. In short, using absolutely correct grammar in a dialogue piece may not always be the right thing to do for a given character. It can make them look stilted and pedantic.

Using correct grammar in back story, main plot, or introspective thought, is a definite yes. Using it in casual conversation, not so much. Some charcters would have very fussy grammar and some wouldn't.

Rick

[Chrisken]

One thing that pops to mind...mainly because of a beta job that I did the other day...is the fact that people do not always speak in a grammatically correct manner. They trim words. They add non-standard contractions. They even occasionally slur words together, or make up entirely new ones on the fly. It's a very human thing to do. In short, using absolutely correct grammar in a dialogue piece may not always be the right thing to do for a given character. It can make them look stilted and pedantic.

Using correct grammar in back story, main plot, or introspective thought, is a definite yes. Using it in casual conversation, not so much. Some charcters would have very fussy grammar and some wouldn't.

Good point. I'd also extend this to POV narration or any descriptive writing that's supposed to mirror a characters thoughts, since many people 'think' in good grammar even less than they speak it. When I'm doing a scene from first person Michael, say, I try to have a lot of the narration match Michael's speech patterns, including his lapses in grammar.

[petitchou]

One thing that pops to mind...mainly because of a beta job that I did the other day...is the fact that people do not always speak in a grammatically correct manner. They trim words. They add non-standard contractions. They even occasionally slur words together, or make up entirely new ones on the fly. It's a very human thing to do. In short, using absolutely correct grammar in a dialogue piece may not always be the right thing to do for a given character. It can make them look stilted and pedantic.

Using correct grammar in back story, main plot, or introspective thought, is a definite yes. Using it in casual conversation, not so much. Some charcters would have very fussy grammar and some wouldn't.

Rick

You're right. That's why point of view is so critical in order to make dialogue believable. There are tiers of language in Roswell fan fic, just like there were on the show (which was done well). We can expect that those who are more educated, like Mr. Evans (or any of the teachers), would speak correctly. Professionals ARE pedantic (although, I suspect, you meant the negative connotation of that word and not the denotation--"pedantic" means "educated, book-learned"). A jaded sheriff, on the other hand, would speak another way--Valenti's blunt, short on words, and commanding. The teenagers would speak very differently--a lot of slang, sarcasm, etc. They do, in a way, have their own language. And then there are the NY dupes. Most people write them very well; it's easy dialogue to write--they're violent, crass and uneducated (but cunning--and, often unintentionally, funny). However, sometimes the errors are blatant: it's cringe-worthy when royalty on Antar says something like, "What's up?" or "Gotta go." It's putting all that dialogue together in one story that's difficult for some writers. You almost have to try to put yourself in each person's place, or imagine his or her life experience to write good dialogue. It's not easy to do. Yet some people are really, really gifted at it. It's not impossible; it just takes practice.

Yet that's still no excuse for grammatical and spelling mistakes like its/it's, whose/who's, affect/effect, etc. That has nothing to do with dialogue.

[Kzinti_Killer]

Yet that's still no excuse for grammatical and spelling mistakes like its/it's, whose/who's, affect/effect, etc. That has nothing to do with dialogue.

Lets not forget except/accept, lead/led, really/rely, cloth/clothe, breath/breathe, and for some odd reason definitely/defiantly.

I'm currently undertaking a salvage operation on a defunct fic site in another fandom while I wait for my beta to finish with my latest chapter. The two young ladies that wrote the fic in question were two of the best story tellers that I've ever seen in that fandom. However they seem to have a profound aversion to spell-checker, as well as a serious antipathy for "and, the, but, if, then, than", commas, semi-colons, and certain pronouns. They also have the habit of mixing tenses. *sigh* It's a time consuming pain to clean it all up, but I have a thing for preserving good stories. Even if the technical side of the writing leaves something to be desired.

My own best blooper to date comes from using spell-checker while half awake one morning. I'd run the words "her fear" together into "herfear". Spellchecker turned it into "heifer", which was then dutifully posted with the chapter. I didn't catch it until days later.

Rick