Argh...
Okay, I know this is a bit wanky of me, but forgive me, because I was raised by a teacher with a concentration in Reading and English.
I read a community where people rant about bad fanfiction. Among those things that are ranted about would be spelling and grammar. That's fine, because I'm a bit of a spelling and grammar snob myself.
But when you address multiple fans as "fen", you lose all credibility for your future spelling and grammar rants. Honestly. You may think it looks cute and clever, but it's not. It's not even close. It makes you look like a hypocrite; like your intentional misspellings are somehow better than someone else's accidental ones. Especially if English isn't their first language.
I'm sure that you can back up the clever nature of your misspelling with some pithy rationalization, such as "well 'man' is pluralized as 'men', so why shouldn't 'fan' be pluralized as 'fen'?" Why not? Because "man" is an irregular noun in that way, but "fan" is not. What's more, "fen" is already an accepted word in the English language, with an accepted meaning. When I see you addressing yourself to "dear fen", I wonder why you're ranting at a marsh!
Sorry, I had to rant about this somewhere, and to do so in the community would have quickly devolved into wank. But I acknowledge that it's wanky, and that why I'm keeping the drama here, rather than in a more public location.
I mourn the slow death by 1,000 paper cuts that the English language is suffering.
I read a community where people rant about bad fanfiction. Among those things that are ranted about would be spelling and grammar. That's fine, because I'm a bit of a spelling and grammar snob myself.
But when you address multiple fans as "fen", you lose all credibility for your future spelling and grammar rants. Honestly. You may think it looks cute and clever, but it's not. It's not even close. It makes you look like a hypocrite; like your intentional misspellings are somehow better than someone else's accidental ones. Especially if English isn't their first language.
I'm sure that you can back up the clever nature of your misspelling with some pithy rationalization, such as "well 'man' is pluralized as 'men', so why shouldn't 'fan' be pluralized as 'fen'?" Why not? Because "man" is an irregular noun in that way, but "fan" is not. What's more, "fen" is already an accepted word in the English language, with an accepted meaning. When I see you addressing yourself to "dear fen", I wonder why you're ranting at a marsh!
Sorry, I had to rant about this somewhere, and to do so in the community would have quickly devolved into wank. But I acknowledge that it's wanky, and that why I'm keeping the drama here, rather than in a more public location.
I mourn the slow death by 1,000 paper cuts that the English language is suffering.