Grammar/spelling/punctuation part 1

[limyaael]

Well, everything except the paper and 1200 words on one of the stories is done, and that will work out, and I have two pages done on the paper so far.

(Translation: If I keep working, I'm going to go crazy).

So this, for right now.

Comments

[teh_kittykat]

You don't sound bitter at all, but if you work at it you might reach vinegary perfection after too long. :3

Honestly, though, if there's a spellchecker on something and I'm not having to talk in really-real time, I'll take the minute to run the spellchecker. Even on LJ comments-- I find the "check spelling" option rather useful since I know I tend to make spelling errors or the occasional weird typo. (That's actually one of my minor pet peeves about the otherwise wonderful Semagic client-- it pulls up the Word spellchecker with the nice large dictionary, but it tends to crash said spellchecker a lot in Windows 9x.)

With the majority of internet fics, though, I'm fully convinced the authors are working to sound like idiots. English grammar for a born-and-bred American comes naturally without any instruction at all. It would have to, since it's kind of the native language of the US and all. Oh, sure, you wouldn't necessarily be able to follow all the tropes of written English perfectly with no instruction, but handling things like word order and the placement of restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses is an "ear" thing that you'd already have developed just from speaking English. And let's not get into l33t, which can take longer to type than real English since you have to pause and remember what the abbreviations are or reach out of your way to the number keys.

So nah, rock on. Spelling and grammar are way too important to good writing just to be ignored, and it's not like you have much excuse for poor spelling with the proliferation of spellcheck. (And even grammar check.. it's usually wrong but it can be helpful when you've got a slight wording problem or want to avoid passive voice like the plague.)

[limyaael]

The horrifying thing is that (most of) my students who are non-native English speakers do better with the grammar and spelling than my students who are native English speakers. The only thing I can blame is a lack of reading, and maybe sometimes pronunciation influencing what gets on the page. That's the only reason for mixing up "they're/there/their," or using "a" for "I," as keeps happening with the papers I grade.

[silverwerecat]

The horrifying thing is that (most of) my students who are non-native English speakers do better with the grammar and spelling than my students who are native English speakers.

I hear you. I've been told numerous times that my writing it doesn't show that my native language is other that english. I cannot tell if this is true and I'm not even sure if this is a compliment anymore. *grin*

I cannot speak for all non-native English speakers, but for me this is an on-going learning process; one I try hard not to fail. Perhaps native English speakers don't see it that way.

Just my two cents.

[dglenn]

Several times now I've identified non-native speakers on the basis of unusually correct usage, in the absence of other clues. (But admittedly I'm not certain until I see additional evidence such as a non-native idiom; a few native speakers are that consistently correct.) Even non-native speakers who do "sound foreign" are often using grammatically correct forms, just not the particular correct forms that most native speakers would reach for first. (And when second-language mistakes appear, it's usually easy to tell them from mere carelessness or ignorance if one reads/listens long enough to note the patterns, and sometimes even possible to make a reasonable guess at the speaker's first language by observing the pattern of mistakes.)

What does fool me is when a non-native speaker creates new structures (such as coining a new word or creating a new compound word) in exactly the way I would expect a native speaker to do so. There are rules that only linguists, not grammarians, usually talk about, regarding how to "correctly" break the rules-we-all-know (and "correctly" in this context means "as a native-speaker would do so", since linguists aren't interested in saying how things ought to be). When a non-native speaker has internalized those rules, they've reached a level beyond mere fluency.

mm-hmm.

[lian_li]

--> another non-native here. Also read grammar rant pt. 2 , and I find that yep, the problems mentioned are mother tongue issues rather than foreign learner ones...we prefer sounding awkward and strange (HA! No-one and nothing messes with my megalomanic German sentence structure! Hehe...) over using completely wrong grammar.

That's the interesting point: Many a time I just know that an expression is stylistically not advisable (--> right: 'many a time'...phht...) or plain *wrong*, like using a mild case of misplaced relative clause ('Running up the stairs, her eyes shone with joy' *giggles* Oooh, I love those! So many hilarious mental images ^_^).
But I might still choose it exactly because it is more colloquial.

Nevertheless...I lack the inventiveness and wit that goes along with (native) colloquial speech. Bother. I think that's what really gives us away (well, apart from stray oddities.)

Oh, and 'he nodded' ,'he advised': we were trained in school to be as imaginative as possible. Ask and say -- go away! (Uh, I just made that up, it's no catch phrase!)
And I still believe it is a sign of good style if a writer comes up with a more intense description every now and then.
One path to good style might also be to question convention: '"Oh yes!" she nodded' has become so commonplace that it does not occur to the writer that it makes about as much sense as "'Oh no...' she frowned" (= little.)

It takes effort to picture what you're writing instead of just using handed-down expressions...obviously few people make that effort, or else they'd realize that they're writing impossibilities (of course, this equally applies to, uh, opal eyes *^_^*)

Ach, but while I might rub my hands in glee over (over?) never committing the more heinous crimes you mentioned, your rants never fail to alarm me to the more exotic pitfalls out there -- flair/flare, HUH? (learning English the video game way: Chrono Trigger, Lucca's special tec 'Flare'. Fire attack. So -- no chance of ever mixing these up. *big grin*)

uh, anyway -- sorry for giving in to ranting in your own private backyard ^_^
Must be the side effects of that paper on grammaticalization I'm currently writing... mmmh....evolution of grammar...

[onyxflame]

Or writing "should of" instead of "should've". I HATE that.