A little something for the Grammar Police.
Grammar Police
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Comments
Exactly!
They'd rather play weird power games than hear the content of what you're saying.
Grammar Police are horrible evil people and they can pull that shit
exactly once with me before I put them on my avoid list.
for the axe had convinced them that because his handle
was made of wood he was one of them.
Exotic cultures
Many of my stories are strongly influenced by my experiences with other cultures. I encountered resistance at first but being the snotty, disrespectful woman that I am, it seems they have given up on me.
Some people are simply not compatible
...and if a guy can't speak correct English, then it's probably better to say goodbye. When you put true love against corruption of our wonderful language, then duty must come first.
Remember, we're not just police, we're judge, jury and executioner, and we have to execute orl that lot wot can't talk propa. They're a disgrace to our kind.
Imagine
That's got to be a humiliating rejection for the young man, something that just might make him stay up at night and fume for the next 20 years.
Consequently, it has to be rude awakening for the young lady, and something she might cry over, the next few months.
-- Daphne Xu
That's where
I went wrong! Bet he can't use a knife and fork properly, either.
Angharad
On a comments dealing with writing style.
The weirdest comment I have ever gotten on my grammar was from an anonymous troll that ran me off of another website.
The person stated that he or she found my sentence structure to be "technically correct". But, he or she hated the the way in which I wrote my stories.
To bad the comment was from an anonymous source. I would have explained very simply that I prefer to have details stated in the dialogue scenes I read and write.
But, when is comes to dialogue scenes everyone seems to forget that no one speaks "the king's english". Every single person has speech which has some form of accent and inflection in the words they use. And people use various words and terms, depending on the person's culture and upbringing.
Dialect in Dialogue
I have to admit that I'm a bit negative toward writing dialogue in dialect. Beyond the simple difficulty of getting it right, there is also the problem of writing standard pronunciation phonetically to make the person sound lower-class (or otherwise different from us). Examples: "uv" for "of", "wimmin" for "women", "wat" for "what". Even when pronunciation isn't quite the Queen's English, writing it out phonetically exaggerates relatively non-controversial pronunciation. Also, writing non-standard dialogue is often a tactic of showing someone or his "group" to be different from us.
BTW: what is the correct pronunciation of "victuals"? Even standard pronunciation has been bumpkinized.
-- Daphne Xu
Dialect: A pinch'll do 'er
There are several great writers whose use of phonetic spelling for dialogue drives me up a wall. Twain and Faulkner come to mind first. Maybe back in those days it was necessary to bumpkinize every syllable of dialogue clear through the story in order to get the idea across that you is dealin' with country folk. But I find sparin' most of thet thar apostrophizin' n' whatnot to be just as effective. If you go a little heavier toward the beginning of each dialogue section the reader's mind will fill in the rest, if your word choice and syntax are consistent with the character. Also visual clues. Having a merman who 'looked like Willie Nelson' give my heroine a friendly wink and say "There you go, Little Lady..." seemed like enough to convey his Gulfie (off-the-coast-of-Texas) accent, altering the spelling would have been overkill; and annoying.
for the axe had convinced them that because his handle
was made of wood he was one of them.
Absolutely
I get the point, and hopefully others do. There's nothing like showing by example, right? :-)
-- Daphne Xu
The catch is...
The catch is that some people speak in such ways. I personally know people from all over the world I have talked to face to face. These people have accents and use terms indicative of their culture. And I feel when one writes about various types of people, not taking into account their possible accents and the terms they use would be a disservice to them.
Due to my past...
I heard a variety of dialects. I would have to say that all are correct for the area they are used in. Some are also very difficult to understand for someone not used to hearing it spoken. When I was in boot camp I literally had to play translator for one guy in my unit since whenever he got excited he talked so fast with his North Carolina accent that no one else could understand him. Having lived there for a good part of my teenage years I understood him perfectly.
For several years I was one of the network admins for a global company, there were times I would get calls from South Africa, Germany, China, Australia, Great Britain, etc. I have to say of all the accents and butchered English that I heard spoken, the ones from Great Britain were the most difficult to understand. Not sure what the term for the slang/dialect version of English that they used, but I found it the hardest of all to understand.
When I write dialogue, I do try to keep it as standard as possible but if the character in question would use "Y'all" instead of "You all" then you'll find that in the dialogue. Or if the character is emphasizing syllables purposefully either because they are illiterate or talking that way for other reasons then I feel its necessary to do so in the dialogue. It's no different than someone writing out "Mommmm!" instead of "Mom", which is widely acceptable.
The same would go for a story set deep in the Appalachian mountains. You would never hear someone say, "Go get that Two and one half gallon bucket and bring it back to me." What you would heard them say is, "Go fetch that peck bucket." or even, "Go fetch that there peck bucket." signifying a specific bucket to go fetch.
Yes it's not proper English but when it comes to dialogue it's very rare to hear someone speak proper English. And it adds a bit of realism to the story when you can do it without it becoming clumsy to read. The trick is not making it hard to read.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Nice comment.
"Yes it's not proper English but when it comes to dialogue it's very rare to hear someone speak proper English. And it adds a bit of realism to the story when you can do it without it becoming clumsy to read. The trick is not making it hard to read."
Nuuan. You put the issue in wonderful context. Good job.