10369 réponses à ce sujet

[soignee]

LupusYondergirl wrote...
I honestly wouldn't worry about it, though.  I'm one of those OCD academia types.

Corker wrote...
*votes for worrying about it* 

Technique matters, and that includes grammar, punctuation and spelling.  A funny book like "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" can make the topic (well, at least punctuation) less painful.  And while the rules can get Byzantine, the most common ones that you'll need for genre fiction writing really aren't that bad.

/rant

Here, have an article by one of my favourite people in the world ever on the subject of language and the evolution there of: http://www.stephenfr...your-language…/

Mr. Fry makes a good point; his language-as-a-growing-city not only is visually beautiful, but makes sense. I like the cultural discrepancies in grammar, it's human. I personally like watching trends and seeing them ebb and flow in all areas of culture, so I might be a little different.

I love Countdown (shhhh leave me alone, I work at home and it's easy to watch) for this reason and the Dictionary Corner section is brilliant at shedding light in that "afternoon television" way on how certain words come into meaning and how grammar shifts over time. This "save the word" website here shows this; words aren't sacred, grammar isn't the ten commandments and things shift and change.

(As an aside my nickname on this forum, Soignee, is an old trend/fad word from the 1920s, commonly associated with flappers and free spirited types then and has since fallen into disuse.)

 I'm going to guess the following won't sit right, but something we all do everyday like texting, facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, internet forums and emails means new words and ways of communicating are shifting, and new words pop up through specific avenues. I could write a thesis on language trends, communication and how people interact on Twitter, it's fascinating. It's like a large scale version friendship circles, which usually have their own language anyway, but Twitter makes it global.  (@fanfictionsucks, my cat is lulz- have a picture of it. #boringupdate.)

Pedantry and me have never been friends, to be honest. I don't like the YES BUT IT'S WRONG unbending attitude language pendants have, usually matched with I SAW THAT THERE WAS AN APOSTROPHE IN AN ACRONYM WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO IT'S ON FIRE THAT IS WHAT anecdote that makes FFFFFFFFF- face usually. My old English Language lecturer at university always used to say that he was there to undo and break all the rules you learnt at school, because they were there to be broken. He has a point.

If everyone stuck to the same laws of language, three modern authors off the top of my head - Irving Welsh, Will Self and even Terry Pratchett- wouldn't be published. I know James Joyce isn't exactly well liked and is becoming a literary joke now to some, but Ulysses is not a grammar norm either and is a solid of example of syntax and grammar being "law"breaking.

Stephen Fry wrote...

Convention exists, of course it does, but convention is no more a register of rightness or wrongness than etiquette is, it’s just another way of saying usage: convention is a privately agreed usage rather than a publicly evolving one. Conventions alter too, like life. Things that are kept to purity of line, in the Kennel Club manner, develop all the ghastly illnesses and deformations of inbreeding and lack of vital variation.

Imagine if we all spoke the same language, fabulous as it is, as Dickens? Imagine if the structure, meaning and usage of language was always the same as when Swift and Pope were alive. Superficially appealing as an idea for about five seconds, but horrifying the more you think about it.

Quote taken from the above Fry article I linked. Sometimes it's okay to bend the rules, honest. =)

[Sarah1281]

But for a GW healer mage for example, what are they going to do against the darkspawn masses, heal themselves again and again... Makes no sense. One of the GW commanders has to bite the bullet and say "Deep Roads: Traditional but strictly optional... You want a way out... We can assist..."

Presumably the mage wouldn't have the mana to heal themselves indefinitely and if they did bring dozens of lyrium potions and insisted on refreshing themselves every time they run low then they really only have themselves to blame when the darkspawn don't manage to kill them. Still, it's not like it's a rule that they HAVE to go there. Someone (I don't remember if it was Duncan or Alistair) made it pretty clear that that's just the norm.



As far as page breaks went, I used to use a whole line of **** before using - - and now used just a single letter as a place-holder to go back and replace with their lines as the letter is the only thing more-or-less guarenteed not to up and disappear on me when I upload a chapter.



And on the topic of textspeak...pedantic or not, looking at it makes my eyes hurt. If the day comes when language has devolved to the point where everyone uses things like 2 and 4 in things beyond the internet and it's acceptable as proper English then I feel that that will be a sad day indeed. I LIKE proper English. It's one thing to add new words but a lot of textspeak really comes from a desire to save time instead of having to type out a whole word and having language change to make that more acceptable in less informal settings would have it lose something for me. I already can't take something seriously if it's littered with eyesores like no capitalization and purposeful misspellings (I would like to add that I mean DELIBERATE misspellings and so there's no need to quote any typos I may make). If it's just texts or twitters then I guess it really doesn't matter but it is a huge pet peeve of mine and probably always will be. Considering that I'm the kind of person who will use semicolons in a text message, that's really not very surprising.

[SurelyForth]

I have a tendency to agree with Stephen Fry on most things. I actually quit a fandom over grammar pedantry (which was, at its core, internet peacocking via how insansely snobby a person could be over forum posts).

I try very hard to be astute with punctuation and keep things grammatically sound, but I find that my commitment to my own style means I have no problems throwing that stuff under a bus if they interfere with how I want something to read. While I'm probably the only person who picks up on this, everyone else assuming I'm just someone who has a tendency to forget punctuation altogether, it feels closer to how it sounds in my head than it would if it were written "correctly."

Modifié par SurelyForth, 04 octobre 2010 - 01:39 .

[Aroihkin]

Sarah1281 wrote...

But for a GW healer mage for example, what are they going to do against the darkspawn masses, heal themselves again and again... Makes no sense. One of the GW commanders has to bite the bullet and say "Deep Roads: Traditional but strictly optional... You want a way out... We can assist..."

Presumably the mage wouldn't have the mana to heal themselves indefinitely and if they did bring dozens of lyrium potions and insisted on refreshing themselves every time they run low then they really only have themselves to blame when the darkspawn don't manage to kill them. Still, it's not like it's a rule that they HAVE to go there. Someone (I don't remember if it was Duncan or Alistair) made it pretty clear that that's just the norm.

As far as page breaks went, I used to use a whole line of **** before using - - and now used just a single letter as a place-holder to go back and replace with their lines as the letter is the only thing more-or-less guarenteed not to up and disappear on me when I upload a chapter.

And on the topic of textspeak...pedantic or not, looking at it makes my eyes hurt. If the day comes when language has devolved to the point where everyone uses things like 2 and 4 in things beyond the internet and it's acceptable as proper English then I feel that that will be a sad day indeed. I LIKE proper English. It's one thing to add new words but a lot of textspeak really comes from a desire to save time instead of having to type out a whole word and having language change to make that more acceptable in less informal settings would have it lose something for me. I already can't take something seriously if it's littered with eyesores like no capitalization and purposeful misspellings (I would like to add that I mean DELIBERATE misspellings and so there's no need to quote any typos I may make). If it's just texts or twitters then I guess it really doesn't matter but it is a huge pet peeve of mine and probably always will be. Considering that I'm the kind of person who will use semicolons in a text message, that's really not very surprising.

I'm the same way about textspeak, assuming you mean when "ppl talk like this 2 u" which drives me batsh*t. We have several people who type like this in our guild in Aion and I feel bad, but... I have a hard time giving them much credit for intelligence. It's just hard. I'm of the (unpopular) belief that when using a text-based form of communication, if two more letters in "you" is too much effort, you're either too dumb or too lazy for me to take seriously. And I can know someone is an intelligent, reasonable adult human being from speaking to them on vent or something... but then my eyes will still glaze over when they type.

I'm sorry, but people get treated like they're stupid RL for speech impediments that they can't help... being lazy in writing is something people can help, so I can't get over thinking that they're stupid.

My trumpcard when people tell me they can't be bothered? My quadrupalegic roommate types with a pencil in his mouth and doesn't use "textspeak". He uses full words. My other roommate isn't even a native english speaker and I believe is dyslexic to boot, and she manages to come off as fully coherent. Textspeak makes me die a little inside.

/rant

I kind of want to do the single-letter scenebreak on ffnet now. That's a really good idea. It would mean a full day of editing, though, which I'm not sure I'm up for... especially since FFnet butchers other things randomly as well, so it wouldn't be a guarantee against something else getting borked in two weeks.

If I go on another editing-spree to change my A/N through-out various fics, though, I may swap them all out for a single x. I did get cranky at one point when I had to cut out a smutty bit from TAF, and couldn't do extra linebreaks so that people didn't inadvertently read the ending of the high-rated part if they intended to switch to my website to read it as it was intended. I believe I did like ten "(( Linebreak. ))"s.

It was jarring as hell, but it did its job. <_<

Modifié par Aroihkin, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:04 .

[Addai]

Sarah1281 wrote...

Reika wrote...

Sarah1281 wrote...

Though I think being a Warden would keep a woman from getting turned into a Broodmother. Would rather not find out the hard way though.

That was confirmed, yeah, but how in the world would the Warden know that? They're not even positive about the Warden-baby things we know about.

 

Because being a Warden protects them from other things the Taint can do to a non-warden.

That's a guess that the Warden could make but at the end of the day I feel it's rather foolish for a female Warden to be so certain of this that she completely dismisses the possibility that if she were captured by darkspawn that she could become a Broodmother. WE know that she couldn't but until a female Warden is attempted to be turned into one and it doesn't work, they're just guessing.

(husband)

I think if there was a real serious worry about warden's being broodmothers their would be definite measures taken.   Like making the organization a males only club, or insisting on a rite of Seppuku when the Calling comes rather than having female wardens do the dark spawn charge.

Modifié par Addai67, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:17 .

[mousestalker]

The grammar and spelling mistakes that really get me are my own. As long as it appears that someone is trying to use proper English, they get the benefit of the doubt from me. The Queen's tongue is so riddled with arcane rules and weird orthography that being too pedantic is silly.



The key word there is 'trying'. An awful lot of people do not even try. If you aren't willing to try to be understood, I'm not willing to try to understand.

[Sarah1281]

Addai67 wrote...

Sarah1281 wrote...

Reika wrote...

Sarah1281 wrote...

Though I think being a Warden would keep a woman from getting turned into a Broodmother. Would rather not find out the hard way though.

That was confirmed, yeah, but how in the world would the Warden know that? They're not even positive about the Warden-baby things we know about.

 

Because being a Warden protects them from other things the Taint can do to a non-warden.

That's a guess that the Warden could make but at the end of the day I feel it's rather foolish for a female Warden to be so certain of this that she completely dismisses the possibility that if she were captured by darkspawn that she could become a Broodmother. WE know that she couldn't but until a female Warden is attempted to be turned into one and it doesn't work, they're just guessing.

(husband)

I think if there was a real serious worry about warden's being broodmothers their would be a definite measures taken.   Like making an organization a a males only club, or insisting on a rite of Seppuku when the Calling comes rather than having female wardens do the dark spawn charge.

How much does Weisshaupt even know about how Broodmothers are created anyway? If it weren't for Hespith, we would have met Laryn and had no idea that she used to be a dwarf.

Edit: 

The grammar and spelling mistakes that really get me are my own. As long as it appears that someone is trying to use proper English, they get the benefit of the doubt from me. The Queen's tongue is so riddled with arcane rules and weird orthography that being too pedantic is silly.

The key word there is 'trying'. An awful lot of people do not even try. If you aren't willing to try to be understood, I'm not willing to try to understand.

I don't really obsess about grammar rules and if people mix up their/you're/to then it's not a big deal. I just hate it when people are clearly doing these things on purpose.

Modifié par Sarah1281, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:18 .

[Sialater]

Just because WE know (maybe) it's not possible for a Grey Warden woman to become a broodmother, our wardens don't know.  However, if you harden Leliana and kill Marjolaine... she leads an expedition into the Deep Roads to kill broodmothers. 

That doesn't really sound like a good idea to me.


My mother uses textspeak to text me. I cringe.

Modifié par Sialater, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:21 .

[Aroihkin]

Sialater wrote...
My mother uses textspeak to text me. I cringe.

My mother uses random CAPSLOCKS in emails.

It's both cringeworthy and comical at the same time.

Edit: I actually scared her out of using textspeak... and in typing in all caps, all the time. So it's an improvement, at least. She doesn't just use it for emphasis, either; she types whole sentences in capslock and then switches back to normal. It's a little mind-boggling, especially since she's a huge novel-reader, but I'll take what I can get.

Modifié par Aroihkin, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:37 .

[Creature 1]

There is no such thing as "proper" language. There's an infamous comment on this by James Nicoll, originating on Usenet:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse ****. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

English is littered with relics of past usage. There was Old English with Germanic roots, borrowing from other languages such as Latin and Old Norse, then undergoing a major rehaul following the Norman invasion. Our language is a disorganized mish-mash. This is the reason we have such idiotic spelling--seriously, "thorough"? How about "knight", there's a good one. It used to be pronounced much differently, the k, for instance, was not silent. I can imagine the furor when people started to minimize the k--"They're debasing the language!" No, languages change. That is all.

I try to stick with the consensus rules for spelling, grammar, and punctuation because I think it's least intrusive. But I won't be bothered by English changing, and don't think it's a bad thing that some are beginning to spell it "nite" instead of "night", for instance. Just like spelling "sun" as "sonne" looks strange to us now, it only looks odd because we're not used to it.

Modifié par Creature 1, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:37 .

[Addai]

(husband)

I don't think the earlier Lore is that defined on the issue (What Weisshaupt knows). I would assume that GW's like most organizations do make some effort to have some form of empirical learning on subjects like this.

I though can't imagine the organization keeping the same  a coed policies if word gets out on the brood mother issue. I do like what Shadow light dragon said about Gaiders comment that they could be turned in theory but they would be infertile.

But in terms of "Cost Benefit Analysis" one brood mother can do a lot more damage then what your average warden can do (if you use the massacre at the Amaranthine fort as a guide for assessing the fighting strength of your average warden). So clearly some policy change is in order. At the very least they shouldn't be going to the deep roads to die.

Modifié par Addai67, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:46 .

[soignee]

Sarah1281 wrote...

I LIKE proper English.

The point I was trying to make is that it doesn't exist. Stealing another analogy from people who are smarter then me again, I call the notion of there being such a thing as "proper" English Lies To Children.

As a child you're taught rules and regulations in language. There are boundaries you have to stick to, marked and appraised on. Mistakes are circled in red and the teacher's nice, firm pen double ticks your correct list of adjectives and use of the semi-colon.  

The more you learn of language, etymology and communication, however, is that there is no red pen in life and you're free falling in your speech, and if you insist that there is one still, you're blindly not seeing the root and cause of what language is.

Who defines proper, who defines the language rules now? There's lexicographers, sure. but they work in the way good archivists do and observe how words change and are used in modern usage. So words used daily on twitter, facebook and message boards like lulz, chav and innit end up in the official dictionaries due to use. So, technically? Your version of proper English is not actually is, thanks to good lexicographers.

It's one thing to add new words but a lot of textspeak really comes from a desire to save time instead of having to type out a whole word and having language change to make that more acceptable in less informal settings would have it lose something for me.

Because words are so sacred in the first place, you mean, and that informality should not exist in the English language? Shakespeare invented words because it pleased him to do so, but if you're on about perceived faddy words that are mainstream now, let's take a big trendish one I've mentioned above, like chav.

Chav is a very English word used as an insult primarily, but the etymology is interesting. I picked it as one of the roots it goes back to is that in Romany Gypsy slang, it means "young boy," and while a chav now can certainly be called a young boy, it's not exactly the same thing.

 In honesty? No one knows where is comes from, it just appeared. Language is like that. It can take take a new meaning and springboard from something it's clearly not any more, how an old department store is suddenly a school and then an extension is put on and 50 years later it's broken up into private apartments. 

But let's have a less visual analogy and more of an example:

FERGIE:
I like that boom boom pow
Them chicken jackin' my style
They try copy my swagger
I'm on that next sh*t now

"Boom Boom Pow," by The Black Eyed Peas.

PUCK:
What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?  
What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor;  
An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause.

(Taken from Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," III.i.79)

As an aside, this is the first recorded use of the word Swagger. Shakespeare invented it[1]. That is right, MY BOY SHAKESPEARE GOT SWAG.

Yeah, the English language. So proper.

Considering that I'm the kind of person who will use semicolons in a text message, that's really not very surprising.

Yeah, it makes a good wink face.
 

Urgh, I blame Victorian language purists for pedantry in language. I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK LATIN YOU GUISE, GO AWAY.

[1] ...allegedly.

Modifié par soignee, 04 octobre 2010 - 02:51 .

[FutileSine]

Sialater wrote...

Just because WE know (maybe) it's not possible for a Grey Warden woman to become a broodmother, our wardens don't know.

To go on my own personal tangent with this, I think this statement represents one of the most challenging things to do when writing FF - placing myself in my characters shoes and trying to see things from her perspective...NOT the perspective of the fangirl who has spent waaaaaaaaaaay too much time researching things.

If I may, a key point for me in this regard is the stupid Ashes quest.  My character, Artalise, is kind of cynical, and takes seriously her duty to ending the Blight.  She doesn't understand why she should waste time going after the Ashes to save a man whom they don't really need (Helllllooooo Teagan) when there are actual treaties to be fulfilled.  Yes, *I* know that she is suppose to save Eamon so that the Landsmeet can happen....but Artalise doesn't!  

 

However, if you harden Leliana and kill Marjolaine... she leads an expedition into the Deep Roads to kill broodmothers. 

That doesn't really sound like a good idea to me.

Srsly?  Wow.  Can you imagine what a disturbing scene that would be to have your warden come across a broodmother (maybe when s/he does their calling or whatever) that reminds your warden of an Orlesian Bard they once knew....*shudder*


@Creature1 - Totally agree with you!  A part of me absolutely dies when I see textspeak, or whatever...but then I realize that that is the part of me that still loves tradition and what not...and sometimes traditions have to die to make way for the new.  I just have to realize that language really is a living thing and it *does* evolve...maybe not in the way I like, but there you have it.  I know I just basically stated what you had put forth...just much less eloquently....

[Creature 1]

soignee wrote...
I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK LATIN YOU GUISE, GO AWAY.

 Which version of Latin, specifically?    Archaic Latin, vulgar Latin, classical Latin, Medieval Latin . . . ?

[Sialater]

There is no such animal as "proper English," true. And American English is actually the older form of the language than British or Australian, etymologically speaking. However... while I don't mind "nite" replacing, "night," or "thru," replacing, "through," I have to draw the line at 2=to and 4=for.





There is actually a really good essay in this month's Writer's Digest magazine about how elitist MFA programs who refuse to teach genre writing are actually doing more harm than good. That people we admire such as Dickens and Shakespeare actually wrote for their audiences and not for other writers as current writing schools teach.



Which brings me to writing fanfiction (See? I'm back on topic). It's like a training crucible for the future genre writer. You learn by doing in the only school available.

[soignee]

Creature 1 wrote...

soignee wrote...
I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK LATIN YOU GUISE, GO AWAY.

 Which version of Latin, specifically?    Archaic Latin, vulgar Latin, classical Latin, Medieval Latin . . . ?

*snorts*

Have an internets, use it well. 

[Sialater]

FutileSine wrote...

 

However, if you harden Leliana and kill Marjolaine... she leads an expedition into the Deep Roads to kill broodmothers. 

That doesn't really sound like a good idea to me.

Srsly?  Wow.  Can you imagine what a disturbing scene that would be to have your warden come across a broodmother (maybe when s/he does their calling or whatever) that reminds your warden of an Orlesian Bard they once knew....*shudder*

Yeah, I may have to write a sequel to The Rescue where Moira finds out the fate of Leliana.

[Aroihkin]

Personally, as someone who didn't know about its/it's until it was pointed out by a reader a few years ago? You won't see me dithering over every single semi-colon or having fits over "proper" english to the high degree that folks are talking about here... but I do get pretty paranoid sometimes that I'm missing something else huge and facepalm-worthy.

I literally never had an actual english class to get the basics from. Oh, and for the longest time I didn't know about --, either. Which is part of why FFnet's newest bs is driving me insane. Way to set me back a few years there, FFnet.

Also? Semicolons. I didn't realize they existed until 200...6ish? 2007? I remember trying it out for the first time in a particular RP game and asking my language-savvy scene partner if I'd just butchered it. XD Apparently it passed!

"do u like it wen i talk stupid 2 u" textspeak is a practice that I just can't get behind, though. Eugh.

Sialater wrote...

FutileSine wrote...

 

However, if you harden Leliana and kill Marjolaine... she leads an expedition into the Deep Roads to kill broodmothers.

That doesn't really sound like a good idea to me.

Srsly?  Wow.  Can you imagine what a disturbing scene that would be to have your warden come across a broodmother (maybe when s/he does their calling or whatever) that reminds your warden of an Orlesian Bard they once knew....*shudder*

Yeah, I may have to write a sequel to The Rescue where Moira finds out the fate of Leliana.

I never really did much with Leliana in-game, but... wow. Poor Leliana if that happened. D:

Modifié par Aroihkin, 04 octobre 2010 - 03:08 .

[Maria13]

*Addai (husband) Yes, the GWs need a policy change on "ending it". N



*Soignee on "chav" in Spanish we have a word, "chaval", that means kid or boy and then a corruption of it "chavala" which means girl and chaval is reputed to come from romany... So there you go.

[Creature 1]

Aroihkin wrote...
Also? Semicolons. I didn't realize they existed until 200...6ish? 2007? I remember trying it out for the first time in a particular RP game and asking my language-savvy scene partner if I'd just butchered it. XD Apparently it passed!

I mostly just use semicolons to fix comma splices when I don't feel like splitting them to two sentences or fixing in some other manner.  Sometimes I leave comma splices as they are, though, because that's the way we roll. 

[Aroihkin]

Yeah, neither of my fanfic Wardens will die in the Deep Roads. One will have assisted suicide (with insistent company joining in) and the other... I'm not sure yet.

Edit:

Creature 1 wrote...

Aroihkin wrote...
Also? Semicolons. I didn't realize they existed until 200...6ish? 2007? I remember trying it out for the first time in a particular RP game and asking my language-savvy scene partner if I'd just butchered it. XD Apparently it passed!

I mostly just use semicolons to fix comma splices when I don't feel like splitting them to two sentences or fixing in some other manner.  Sometimes I leave comma splices as they are, though, because that's the way we roll. 

(I was going to say that I don't even know what a comma splice is, but figured it out with the rest of what you said. Go team context!)

Modifié par Aroihkin, 04 octobre 2010 - 03:25 .

[Corker]

mousestalker wrote...

The key word there is 'trying'. An awful lot of people do not even try. If you aren't willing to try to be understood, I'm not willing to try to understand.

OKAY THIS.  This is what I'm trying to say.

If you have a style that bends or breaks the rules, or you like using slang, or whatever... fine.  As long as your meaning is clear. 

But punctuation and clause use, in particular, help regulate the ebb and flow of the words.  They partition them, group them, and turn them into little units of sense. 

If I have to read a piece twice, once to figure out where the signposts should have been and another time to actually hear all the words in order, I will stop reading that author unless it's really, really something worth working hard at understanding.  An innovative author doing something new with the language, perhaps.  An ancient author whose style is now foreign, all the time (for me; that's my hobby).  Fanfic? Not usually, no.

Maybe this has to do with my reading style.  When I read, I say the words in my head, one at a time, and the punctuation tells me where to breathe, where to pause, and how the pause sounds.  Maybe the folks who just look at the words and absorb their meaning without 'sounding them out' don't have this problem?  Some kinds of punctuation mistakes are worse than others for that reason - too many commas and periods where they shouldn't be, and I feel like I'm in the car with  a kid learning to drive stick.  Go, stop, go, stop, lurch lurch lurch. 

Or maybe it's a generational thing.  Maybe we'll go back to manuscript-style walls of text with no punctuation save the occasional period, capital letters only once in a while, and variable whitespace usage.  I find it hard as heck to read, but it apparently worked once.

[Sarah1281]

@soignee: Yes, Shakespeare invented words. Good for him. Language involves. Good for it. I am probably never going to be happy seeing 'nite' instead of 'night' or 'thru' instead of 'through' no matter how much people talk about how natural it is. To me, it's stupid. I'm sure there were people ages and ages ago who saw the beginning of 'sun' instead of 'sonne' felt the same way.



Easy solution? I won't ever use those abbreviations but won't actually complain about it unless the topic is, as it currently is, different ideas on new words. And by 'proper English' I wasn't referring to obsessing over a grammar book, I meant words that I could feel free to use in an essay without losing points. That's my personal definition of 'proper English' and it really doesn't matter if there are teachers out there accepting all sorts of textspeak words or in the future there will be teachers who do so. I'm not trying to impose my views on anybody, just explaining something that drives me crazy since the topic came up.

[Addai]

I tend to be a grammar/ punctuation/ spelling nerd, though not obsessive about it. I think you just have to ask yourself, if you're going outside of standard usage, a) is there a reason for it, like storytelling style or in-character usage; is it consistent across the whole work. If I like a story, though, I'll forgive a lot. It's free, on the internet. No sense in making a lot of demands.

[Creature 1]

Dialogue's another thing, then you can break the rules as needed. Comma splices right and left.