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phantom-inker β Guaranteed Popular Writing
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Published: 2006-11-16 18:14:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 22491; Favourites: 410; Downloads: 385
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The top ten ways you can guarantee your writing will be cool.I wrote this up because I was sick and tired of seeing the same beginner writing mistakes over and over and over and over and... well, you get the idea. These mistakes are repeated ad nauseam even by people who ought to know better, so I decided I'd do something about it.
And no, I'm not an English teacher. I'm a degreed computer scientist --- but I'm also well-known as a grammar nazi. (I've at times been both a proscriptive grammarian and a structural linguist, so my objective here is not to correct things that intentionally deviate from standard English, but to correct things that unintentionally deviate.)
This is stored as an image so that there's no ambiguity about what I intended to say. Actually, it's designed as a printable document, and I've included a PDF version for those of you who would like to print this out for reference. This document is freely shareable. Download it, print it, share it with your friends, and maybe, just maybe, there will be a little less unreadable gibberish out there as a result.
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Update, five years later: While this deviation continues to be much-loved by the literati, it's received no shortage of criticism from inexperienced writers, particularly fanfic writers. And so I will say this to those who would criticize: Before you start your complaint, read some books on writing, read some essays on writing, read Stephen King's On Writing, and make sure you know what you're talking about. Whether you like it or not, if you want your work published, if you want other authors to take notice, and if you want your readers not to toss your work aside in disgust, then correct grammar and spelling are required, plagiarism is theft, adverbs are evil, punctuation is strict, and second draft equals first draft minus ten percent.
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Comments: 197
Believe it or not, many schools fail miserably at teaching this sort of stuff, and as if to cover it up, the GCSE writing standards have been lowered. Iβm just going into the final year of my GCSEβs and find it hard to believe how easy it is to get a good grade.
One of my friends managed to get a B-, even though the word βlolβ appeared a total of 11 times and her story switched tenses twice. How is this justified?
If people were taught properly there would be no real need to make these sorts of rules (all of which I completely agree with) and the writing standard would be improved. Itβs such a shame that simple skills like using punctuation have been neglected, in favour of more βengaging activitiesβ.
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That's pretty sad.
And I'm sorry to say that you're absolutely right: So many people are educated so poorly these days (thank you ever-so-muchly, No Child Left Behind Act) that I could probably have written twenty or thirty "reasons" --- I limited it to the ten most egregious errors that tend to appear in online fiction, but I certainly could have continued without much difficulty.
My fiancΓ©e's mother used to teach 4th grade (age 9 to 10, or thereabouts). She retired this year, as early as she could, because she was sick of dealing with children whose parents didn't even try to educate them, discipline them, or, honestly raise them. She didn't want to just be a babysitter, but the system these days is set up to encourage exactly that. She loved her job for so many years, but the last half-dozen very effectively drummed out any lingering faith she had in the educational system. It's a sad reflection on modern society when dedicated teachers quit because of the parents.
Weakened GCSEs? There was once a time when a British education meant somebody had at least force-fed you several metric tons worth of the classics; now it sounds like you folks barely get the Cliff's Notes. It sounds like education is just as bad on your side of the pond these days as it is on ours. Joy. World's goin' to hell in a handbasket, I swear.
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I feel sorry for your fiancΓ©e's Mum and practically every other teacher out there, particularly the teachers that try and give pupils the best education they can with what they have to work with. I can remember when I first started secondary school, there was this one teacher that you could tell put a lot of thought into every one of her lessons. Four years later, sheβs just given up; her time spent preparing the lessons was wasted because nobody listened. Even in the very top groups, nobody wants to learn.
The schools wonβt even send home letters to the parents if their child is being disruptive, simply because this might make them look bad, and - as you rightly said -the parents couldnβt give a shit anyway.
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Thank you for this wonderful tool, Mr. Inker.
I shall use it to its full capacitie [sic] and distribute it amongst my peers far and wide.
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You're very welcome. Read it, learn it, and understand it, and you'll be the better for it.
The word, by the way, is correctly spelled "capacity" in its common singular form, and "capacities" in its rarely-used plural form. Generally (with a few exceptions), if you have a long "ee" sound on the end of a word in English, you end the word with "y" in singular, and "ies" in plural; and "capacity" is no exception to this rule of thumb.
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I know. That's why I put [sic] to indicate an error.
Just my little joke.
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Hah! you did indeed. I guess I'm so used to reading computer source code (and, more importantly, markup languages such as HTML and XML) that my eyes glossed over anything written in [brackets]. I'll obviously have to be more careful replying next time.
Or, alternatively, maybe I should really try to get more than three hours of sleep one of these nights
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Best of luck, from one writer to another.
LION OF ZION.
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Someone has put my very same frustrations into word much better than I. I missed the whole 'lol' train (I'm 22) and refuse to insert it into my writing. I will use it when chatting with a friend on an IM but other than that I avoid it like the plague. I refuse to submit!!
Ahem, I'm done now.
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*chuckle* I don't believe I've ever actually used "lol" for any kind of writing other than when quoting someone else. I don't honestly find it very communicative, so I tend to omit it and go with something like *dies laughing* instead (but only over IM and in postings; in e-mail and most other writing, I write very formally whenever possible).
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Heh, I do that too. 'lol' is usually left for when I'm not actually laughing but find something mildly amusing. In serious writing, it's never ever used.
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The sad thing is the people who need to read this are the people who don't read.
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Unfortunately, you're probably right. But it doesn't hurt for me to try to educate 'em anyway.
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One can always hope to break the language barrier between literate and idiot.
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Yes. Of course, one can always hope to win the lottery too. That doesn't mean it'll ever happen >.>
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Phantom,
As a computer book author myself (and as the moderator of Seatails.org which is where I saw the original link to your site) I commend your attempts at re-introducing real grammar back to those who should have learned it in grade school.
My tolerance for bad grammar has dropped dramatically the older I've become, which has unfortunately left me in a state of chronic despair in this day and age.
Thank you, and good luck with your campaign!
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Thanks, Kurt!
Yes, modern grammar is in a sorry state indeed, with "lol" and "cya" and "whereru" now qualifying as complete sentences for many writers. Story writing is especially bad, since the "lol" generation has seen fit to carry their disdain for the language into their storytelling as well. And, well, after suffering through one too many bad pieces of fan fiction, I decided to produce this handy chart of common mistakes to avoid. I doubt anybody will actually use this to clean up his or her writing, but I can always hope, and at least I'm not sitting on the sidelines now, watching the bad writing grow and breed without doing anything about it.
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Finally! Someone who decided to put something up to help all these young and aspiring writers something to learn from. Now if only it incorproated grammer....
In anycase good job on this.
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Thanks
I just got sick and tired of seeing the same dozen or so writing mistakes over and over and over and over and...
...and over and over until my brain imploded and I started drooling like an idiot and repeating myself. Basic rules like these don't seem to be taught in school these days, or if they are, nobody seems to be paying attention. So I decided to put the biggest, most glaring errors all together in one handy, easy-to-print chart so teachers, students, and poor writers could all readily and easily refer to it and (hopefully) learn from it. Lord knows whether I succeeded, but at least I tried.
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Exactly, I'm all for helping those new to writing but to honestly sit there and constantly critique and point out the same dadgum errors is just too much.
I really hope this does work out as a learning device, I hate pointing out the same mistakes over and over again!
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It's good to find a fellow grammar nazi, as well as somebody who understands the horrible agony of reading poorly written... well, anything. I've heard of a French author that doesn't capitalize or punctuate at all! Wouldn't that be awful to try to read?
Plus, this is a funny way of putting it
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Yes, indeed, grammar nazis unite! You're absolutely right that that would be wretchedly horrible writing to have to suffer through; I'm glad I'm not the poor soul to have to parse it.
I've been tempted to create more "Popular Writing" images, such as "Guaranteed Popular Plots: Scooby Doo Knew," and "Guaranteed Popular Spelling: 1337 is yr fr3nd!"
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That would be fantastic, I'd love it if you made those! Of course, those each have their contexts. I mean, Scooby Doo is perfect for six year olds and 1337... I'm sure we'll find a purpose for it someday! Of course, if either of those made their way into a story I was reading, I might cry.
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...People don't actually use quotation marks?
An interesting...piece...Yeah. I gotta' admit, I've seen enough cases of all of that myself. Sorta' sad really.
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Yes, people do this.
I've actually read a book, as in a published work, that doesn't use a single quotation mark. You really had to pay attention to catch what was said from what was thought. It's all told from the main character's point of view, and a good story... just keeps you on your toes.
In theory, I agree with all these rules. I do a fair amount of IM team writing, however, and when they tend to save to a text file, you lose italics markup. I've taken to using = around thoughts or words that need extra attention in the editing process, and I don't remove the = marks until I'm done editing the final.
Spelling is a huge pet peeve of mine. Not that I'm so wonderful at it, because I'm not. (smiles) But I'm a firm believer in spellcheck, and darn near every computer has some sort of spellchecker with its word editing software. Having done some editing for a couple of 'zines... (shudders!) Yeah. Spelling was the thing most abused by the writers that was easiest to fix.
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Well put! I totally agree with every point you made with this piece. I'm definitely adding this to my favourites.
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Grammar nazis unite!! I'm on the page with you ... I occaisonally edit or beta-read when I have time, and I dislike feeling like my eye are going to bleed because of missing punctuation or lack of paragraphs. One writer did split the story into proper paragraphs when I asked him to, and it turned out being one of my favourite pieces. Go figure.
For the record, though, a couple of these rules can be broken of the author knows what they're doing ... for example, a series of books I used to read used <> and quotation marks when a certain race of aliens spoke telepathically, and as far as I know no one ever had any problems with it. It developed into a kinda cool, cultish icon for the series.
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I hear you; but likewise, if you're gonna break the rules, you'd better be damn good. Rules like these are for people who don't really know how badly they're mangling the language, who don't realize that their writing reflects so poorly on them.
Personally, though, I wouldn't break a single one of these: I'm a good enough writer to know when it's acceptable to break them --- and also good enough to know that breaking them usually causes more trouble than it's worth. It's better to rephrase the sentence or rework the structure so that breaking the rules is unnecessary.
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:grateful hug: Thank. You. >.<
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Interesting. Ofcourse, alot of this isn't actually true.
I.E, free use law of 1978 or whatever, your post on quotation marks, and your think about names.
Some of this is very relevant, some of this is painfully obvious, and some is your own personal prefence.
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You're quite welcome to follow or ignore any of these rules as you see fit: It's a free country. But if you follow any of these, I place no guarantees on whether anything you write will be read by others (not that I would anyway). Never forget that readers are far more strict than writers in what they're willing to call "good."
Just remember that I didn't find these ten rules by accident.
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That should be thing, not think. I'm not on my normal computer, so please forgive the typos.
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This needs to be hotlinked directly to every fanfiction site, period. Well done.
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Amen. I was going to say the same thing.
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Yes, I know it's rare, but I do type with a double-space separating sentences. Blame my English teachers in high school, and my typing teacher in high school too.
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Too late, the zombie space pirates and robots have been coined in the Ratchet and Clank universe believe it or not 
Lemme note this link to *MamaLucia and see what she thinks; she's no longer a writer, but I draft her to be my grammar Nazi (because I really need it!)
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I love your signature!!! lawl I watch that show all of the time!! YAY!!!
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They're puttin' it to the test!
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"Did you really came across something like that in number 4?"
Not exactly, but I've seen almost as bad. There's nothing like stumbling across a yaoi fanfic that features a variety of straight characters from a variety of different anime shows, all mushed together in some highly improbable love-fest setting. You might laugh... but if you've been around dA enough, you know that kind of stuff is out there, lurking, just waiting to abuse your fragile little mind with its sheer wretched horribleness.
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I wonder what you'd think of my stories?
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I hope I haven't fallen victim to any of those rules though upon reflection I've probably done a few of those things--such as using different fonts. (It was only once, and to denote that the character perspective was changing. Regardless of that fact I haven't even tried finishing that story.)
--
[link] I do more than just lurk and devwatch!
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Excell work!! This is a valuable document! I beleive many things you say in there are true and important for amateur writers to improve considerably.
If I find it possile I will try to include this document into my site.
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You're very welcome. I was sick and tired of having to deal with poor writing on another site I maintain, so I decided this was overdue. Doing any one of these is a BIG RED FLAG to an intelligent reader that says in the boldest of lettering, "Hi, I'm a really bad writer!" Doing more than one at once just compounds insult on injury.
So feel free to include this anywhere you want; as long as the copyright message at the bottom remains, you're welcome to it. (By the way, the PDF version I just posted may or may not be more convenient for you than this one.)
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Yes, thank you for writing this! I hate it when I'm reading something online (eg. Fanfiction) and all of the spelling and grammar and EVERYTHING is horrendous (which probably isn't spelled right 
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