Error-riddled but clueless: To "help" or not - by Leah St. James #grammar #amwriting

Dear fellow grammar nerds:

I know you’re out there. You’re the readers who take note when the wrong to/two/too (or there/their/they’re, roll/role, past/passed...) is used. The first time you might roll your eyes, but you’ll keep reading. Twice in the same page and you might cringe and send a silent message to the author to spend more time proofing. But more than that, if you’re like me, you’ll stop reading.

That happened to me the other day while I was reading an author’s promo blog. (It wasn’t any of our authors!) When I came to the first misused word (an error so bad, I actually laughed, until I was hit with a wave of sympathy), I almost started an email to let the author know there was a bad (really, really bad) error in the blurb. The second stopping point came courtesy of a misplaced modifier (a body part was doing something it shouldn’t be doing). But when the point of view started hopping from head to head so quickly, mine started spinning, I X’d out of the site.

This was all within a couple paragraphs. What do you think the odds are that I’ll purchase that book? Yep. Zero.

We all make typos or grammatical errors from time to time. There could be a few in this blog post, even though I’ve read and re-read to look for them. I’m so embarrassed to discover my own, or when someone else points them out, but I think something bigger is going on. I think there has been a slippage of general grammar knowledge over the past few years. Auto-correct features that seem to have been trained by the untrained masses don’t help.

 

Thanks to Bizarro cartoonists for the timely quip!

 Or maybe it’s not that writers today know less, but that more are publishing poorly edited content. It used to be that published texts—books, articles, etc.—were vetted by editors, probably several layers of them, before reaching the reader. Today, those layers have largely disappeared. Many self-published authors go cheap on editing because, let’s face it, most of us don’t make a lot of money in this business. 

Today it takes an instant to post a piece that could be filled with typos and those cringe-worthy errors. And the more they appear in public, the more those errors are ingrained into the collective lack-of-knowledge base. Maybe that’s how language changes over time—too many people making the same errors over and over until the error becomes the accepted form!

So what, if anything, should the grammar nerd do when stumbling upon those error-filled pieces? (I’m not talking about a single instance. I’m talking about those so bad, we can’t keep reading.) Do we just wince behind our screens and post something benign in the comments? Or do we send a private message to the author so he/she can make corrections? 

Maybe something like: Dear (name of author), I noticed you posted what was probably a draft of your blurb on your blog. I spotted several errors. I hate when that happens to me!”
 
I tell myself that I would want to know if that were my post....maybe. I think that for most of us, any unsolicited “corrective” contact, no matter how well intended, would come across as condescending, resulting in either embarrassment/humiliation or anger, or both. It could generate more bad will than any benefit to the greater grammatical good is worth!

As for the example I mentioned at the beginning, I don’t know the author, so I chose to wince behind my screen and post a benign comment. But those awful errors keep lurking in the back of my mind, and I wonder if I should have tried to contact her.

What do fellow authors and readers think? Let sleeping errors lie, or offer a hoping-to-help hand?.................

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil and the power of love. She is a true grammar nerd who sometimes finds herself mentally diagramming complex sentences. Learn more about her work at her website. Or visit her on Facebook where she posts occasional tidbits about writing and life. (For more Bizarro, go here.)

The Curse of the Grammar Nerd ~ Leah St. James

The first thing I do on Sunday morning (after reading the Roses of Prose blog, of course!) is open the Sunday paper. I know, I know, I'm a dinosaur. But since I work for the organization in my "day job," and I answer calls from readers who are generally ticked off about one thing or another, it behooves me to arm myself with knowledge before heading to the office on Monday morning. (Although I read the eNewspaper on my phone, so maybe not such a dinosaur?) :-) 

I start with the "centerpiece" stories on the front page (A1), move to the publisher's feedback column on A2, then work my way back to the editorial and letters to the editor, and so on. This Sunday I made it all the way to A5 before I found my first uh-oh moment.

It was a headline about a third of the way down the page. I couldn't get to the story itself because I got stuck on the headline:  "Virginia is for felons? 1980's petty theft law lingers," by two reporters from the Associated Press.

Did you catch it, the misplaced apostrophe? At least I assumed it was misplaced, because here's what I learned about how apostrophe placement/usage affects the meaning:

1980's = something "belonging to" or attributed to the year 1980
So as I read it, it would mean the law was enacted in 1980.

1980s = the general time period between 1980 and 1989
So the law was enacted in the decade of the 1980s.

1980s' = Well now I'm just confused....

I know, most of you are probably shaking your heads thinking, WHO CARES, LEAH? It's the story that counts! You've probably already read the story while I'm stuck at the headline, trying to decide the exact meaning of the stupid apostrophe! I can't help it though. That's just how I'm wired. 

As a kid I excelled in English and grammar, scoring way at the top of the standardized tests. At my first job in the FBI, I was pulled from the typing pool to work on a team writing staff commendation letters because I scored high on my grammar placement test there. (My first professional writing job!)

But what was a blessing back then has turned into a curse in these days of lackadaisical spelling and grammar rules--because errors are everywhere. I see them in television commercials, in the little news tickers running at the bottom of news programs, in the closed captioning on television shows.... Trust me, there is an endless supply of grammar goofs in the world, and each one annoys the you-know-what out of me.

None of us like finding errors, especially copy editors, and we have an especially talented group. One young woman, close to my heart, has a sign on her desk that reads:  "I'm silently correcting your grammar." (I want one!)

So I chalked the error up to the fact that it's a wire story. Our editors are so busy proofing/editing the locally produced content, they might not be able to pay much attention to the wire stories. But I must say I felt vindicated when Googled it and found that other news outlets ran the same story but with the correct (in my opinion) headline!

(This is from the Boston Herald online.)

Now I'm trying to figure out how to respond to the critics who have probably already called our feedback line with comments like:  "You morons! There's no apostrophe in that headline!! This is why no one trusts the news anymore!!"

Finally, to put it out of my mind, I read the story (which is about how Virginia has a terrifying low dollar threshold for a theft to be classified as a felony rather than misdemeanor) and decided a misplaced apostrophe in a headline is probably pretty low on my worrisome threshold.

For fun, here are a few quotes about grammar. They made me smile. Maybe they'll give you a chuckle as well!

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.
Author David Sedaris

Anarchy is as detestable in grammar as it is in society."
Author Maurice Druron

"Texting has reduced the number of waste words, but it has also exposed a black hole of ignorance about traditional - what a cranky guy would call correct - grammar."  
Author Richard Corliss

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Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil and the power of love. As much as she loves the use of proper grammar, she tries really, really hard to be respectful of others' need to flout the rules! Learn more at leahstjames.com. You'll also find her posting odds and ends about her life on her Facebook page.

A Scattering of Commas by Betsy Ashton

This may be the nerdiest post yet from me. It's a minor rant about grammar.

When you stop and think about it, writing is like recombinant DNA: Throw a bunch of mouse DNA into a blender, add a dash of bat DNA, a pinch of cat DNA, and push blend. What comes out could be a better mouse of a cat that can fly.

Writing takes twenty-six letters, if you use the Western alphabet, and a handful of silly marks to let a writer craft something on paper that has a semblance of brilliance. Twenty-six letters. Scatter them across a page. Shake them in a bag with flour. Put them on keys in a nearly incomprehensible order. What gives with the QWERTY keyboard anyway? Or, sharpen a cupful of pencils and lay out a stack of legal pads. It doesn't take much more than that to get started.

Oh, wait, you say. What about those silly marks? What about the rules that "govern" them? Well, that is a dilemma. We seem to have more exceptions to the rules than rules themselves. Periods and question marks are fairly easy. They mark the end of a complete sentence or a sentence fragment ("hair ball," cry grammarians), or they mark a question. Either way, they are found at the end of a sentence. Do you use a question mark when you ask a rhetorical question. A colon can function as a kind of period:  As a writer, I like colons. I try to use no more than one per chapter: Sometimes I use more.

Semi-colons defy logic. I mean, who said they can't be used in dialogue? So, if I want to create a series of similar items, do I use a comma or semi-colon? If I have a sentence, which contains multiple clauses, do I use the semi-colon? Like in Johnny and Mack walked to the store to buy candy; Lydia met them there, because she wanted them to treat her; and Suzie ran into them with her car. Okay, that makes absolutely no sense, but you get my gist. What if this was in dialogue? I couldn't use the semi-colon, or could I? I could break this into three sentences, or I could remember that the Delete key is my friend.

It's the lowly comma that gives writers more angina than anything else. To comma or not to comma, that is the question. Whether it is nobler to use them correctly or be creative...

I mentor a first-time writer. We've had interesting discussions about that lowly comma. He doesn't favor commas here:  "Look, Michael, we have to fix this." Nope, If he had his way, there's be no commas in that sentence. Serial commas, as in a, b, and c are alien beings. So are commas before constructions like, "I'm going, too." I think he'd take the comma off his keyboard, if he could.

Just when we were making a ton of progress, along comes a Pulitzer Prize winner that doesn't use quotation marks to set off dialogue. I think you can count the number of quotation marks on both hands. A block of text can have a dozen changes in speaker, some demarked by dialogue tags, like he said. Or not. Some changes in dialogue are set off by action following what I thought was a quote. Once I figured out how to read the book, I couldn't put it down. Of course my mentee had to pick it up one day. He said, "Hey, he doesn't use quote marks. Why do I have to?" My response: because you haven't won a Pulitzer. When you do, you can dismiss grammar.

I'm thinking about running a test:  scatter all the letters of the alphabet onto a piece of paper, had a handful of commas, a period or two, rinse, stir and dry. I wonder what I would end up with. What do you think? Is this worth an experiment, or should I spend an hour looking at kitten videos on Facebook?

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I'm really excited that the trade paper edition of Uncharted Territory was released this week. Please follow me on my website, on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.

Hyperbole and Purple Prose by Betsy Ashton

Don't you get sick of hyperbole? I mean, everything can't be the biggest, bestest, greatest, -est thing/event/sale/speech ever. And when did all national holidays become the place for the biggest, bestest, greatest mattress sales ever! EVER!

I'm going to stay away from political speech here. We've all heard the promises. If you are like me, you're tone deaf to wild promises, silly answers and character attacks. November can't come soon enough.

This is about hyperbole in prose. Too often we've all met books that needed the help of a professional editor. I recently received an ARC from a writer I didn't know with a request for a cover blurb. Forget the fact that he wrote in a genre I didn't even read. It didn't matter to him. He sent an email with his ARC attached. This was my introduction to this stranger. Because he was within the six degrees of friendship with a writer I respect, I took a look at the draft.

I tried, really tried, to read his ARC.

I could see from the first page that the book had never met an editor in its life. Beyond the incorrect punctuation (commas vomited all over the place) and incorrect word usage (lay instead of lie, him and me used as a subject), the author was in love with CAPITAL LETTERS and EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! These weren't in dialogue, where I can tolerate (and use) a very few exclamation points. In one paragraph, six sentences ended with exclamation points. Six. Or, SIX! I began to wonder if he knew the difference between a period and an exclamation point.

Want to guess how many pages I lasted? Four.

I'm sorry, dude. You need to hire an editor, learn your craft and revisit your fifth grade grammar books. Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, I politely declined to offer a cover blurb. I suggested his cover real estate would be better suited for a writer in his genre. He asked for introductions to such writers. Sheesh.

And purple prose. I thought gone were the days of a young girl seeing a handsome stranger across a crowded room and "falling into paroxysms of passion." With apologies to all the great romance writers on this blog, this is not a slam at your genre. The book I read for my book club is a NYT best seller. It was not listed as a romance. And in no way would it ever appear on the USA HEA lists. (Congrats to those of you who have landed there.) Short pithy sentences were frequently followed by elaborate descriptions full of strings of adjectives.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I really, really, really tried.

I love unreliable narrators. Heck, I'm polishing a WIP for publication next year where the narrator is both unreliable and unlikable. No one likes serial killers. And this one is a pip. Female. Tells her own story in the first person. May or may not have a moral compass. Knows why she kills. Learned her craft and practices it frequently.

The writer of this best seller "buried the lead" in this novel, to pick up a journalism term. The writer lost the opportunity to set the hook on the first few pages. I didn't know for several chapters who the primary narrator was. Just when I thought I was on top of the story, just when the pithy images grabbed my attention, the writer dipped her quill pen into a pot of purple ink and let adjectives and adverbs take over where character development and plot growth would have been a better choice.

I try to "write tight." I try to write with a reasonably spare prose. I love dialogue and let it carry the plot more often than not. My style isn't for everyone. Those readers who wait for my next book like it. I thank them every day when I sit to write more paragraphs that become pages.

So, writer peeps. What are your thoughts about hyperbole and purple prose? Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I'm really excited that the trade paper edition of Uncharted Territory was released this week. Please follow me on my website, on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.