Is it hard? How hard is it?

[storydejour]

Hey, typos happen, but just so you know:

A period goes at the end of a sentance.

You can, however, use a comma when you want to interject something into a sentance, like this.

Do you know what a question mark is? Do you know what a question is?

"What a character says" said the professor, "should be placed within quotation marks."

Did you notice?

"Notice what?" you might ask.

Notice that the first letter of the first word in each sentance is capitalized?

because seriously its a lot more enjoyable doing a tease when we aren't having to expend brainpower trying to figure out what the hell the author was trying to say because of a total lack of, puncutation or! the placement of punctuation in the. wrong place because the blood that usually supplies oxygen to our brains is needed elsewhere and it turns into one long hey are you listening to me run on sentance know what i mean so there

[storydejour]

"Too seriously" and "pick another tease"? As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I do, after I've taken the time to check out the tease I'm rejecting. Maybe we need a new tag that says "no punctuation" to save time?

What I was getting at was just how difficult is it??? I'm not talking about purchasing a style manual. I'm talking about putting a period at the end of a frigging sentance. What I mean is, how can someone NOT realize that there is a pause here, so some sort of punctuation is appropriate? I mean, in normal speech, do you not sometimes pause between sentances?

Then, of course, there is the issue of the really poorly-written teases getting suspiciously high ratings. Not that the points matter, but I'm just curious, could it be because many of us don't bother going all the way to the end of a tease to rate it? But hey, that's another subject for another time.

I was just wondering what's so frigging hard about it? It's like.... it has to be done on purpose, right? Nobody can write that way accidentally, can they? Even the other languages, German, French, etc, still use punctuation. If you're going to the trouble to make a tease, why would you intentionally make it so people won't read it?????

Sorry if this offends anyone, I guess I'm just having an unreasonable moment brought on by the frustration of too many potentially outstanding teases being ruined (umm, no, that that kind of ruined) for no reason.

[Worshippingu]

Also must remember, That Milovana is worldwide. Not everyone speaks fluent Englsih, or has the best grammar, and Milovana is a web-tease based story.

All i can honestly say is, "You're right, but try not to dwell too much on their grammar error. I understand how you feel, though."



(hoped this helped) ><

[cumhardy]

I think you'll find 'sentance' is actually spelled "sentence"

[storydejour]

I think you'll find 'sentance' is actually spelled "sentence"

Thanks for jumping on that. I didn't bother to spell-check because the point is not that we expect perfection, zero errors. My point is that I don't have to use spell check or a style manual to make it perfect in order to make it readable. As I said, typos happen, and that's not the nature of the complaint. The question is, if you're going to the trouble to make a tease, why would you purposefully turn it into one long runon sentance without punctuation to make it difficult to read?

As for the teases written in English by those for whom English is not their first language, I don't have a problem with gramatical errors, etc. On the contrary, I think it's awesome and wish I could do as well in German (or any other language). But as I said, German, French, etc, they still use punctuation in ways similar to the way we do it in English.

[cumhardy]

^ I know I was just being silly.
I agree with you mostly. I think pasting the writing into Word to spell and grammar check it would solve 99% of the problems, it takes just a couple of seconds. (maybe a spellchecker could be built into the tease editor?)
Plus people use the "english isnt my first language" excuse but when I see a sentence that says "punhc youslef in hte bals" This is not because of poor english, its just because they couldn't be bothered to read what they just typed.

Then again, its all just captioned porn. We shouldnt take it so seriously. Its stuff to wank over, not shakespeare. Not that I don't appreciate the work that authors put into the good teases, but its wank-fodder and its provided for free. The varying quality of teases is to be expected.

Personally, if I find one thats unreadable, I'll usually skip to the end and rate it badly (the rating system is supposed to be there so we can skip the bad teases aswell as find the good ones). But I find it easy enough to close a tease and find a better one. Usually by reading the first page I can tell if its going to be worth bothering with.

[curved]

This comes up all the time. Many of us offer to proof read for those with poor English but the offer is never taken up. Maybe a big reminder can be added to the tease editor with a list of people who have offered to proof read?

Personally I am used to it now, but I know what you mean and it's not so hard to swallow your pride and ask for help with English...is it?

[Nadine]

Lovely that even some boys noticed it. I don't read many teases, but the same problem happens in the forum and chatrooms, and especially in PMs. English is my seocond language (I'm from Germany), and as such I'm not as fluent in it, as I would like. And it makes it even more difficult to read and understand if the spelling, grammar and punctuation is nonexistent.
Also, how can a foreigner learn it correctly, if it's mostly done wrong?

[dix]

What I was getting at was just how difficult is it???

why would you intentionally make it so people won't read it?????

Your first post failed to define what it means when someone spams a specific type of punctuation after a sentence.

But seriously, people must know if their English is up to scratch. I mean, I wouldn't try to write a tease in German or French and then just post it without having it proof read.

I think most of the problems could be sorted by drafting the tease in a program like Microsoft Word. This should sort out most of the gramatical errors and nearly all of the spelling errors, then all it would require is a quick proof read by someone fluent in the relevant language.

Yeah, it's a little more effort, but it's hardly the end of the world. And I'd like to think that most people on Milovana would be happy to help each other out.

Dix.

[les]

I try to preview before I submit as the visual look is different,
Making grammatical errors easier to see.

Plus I use firefox with a spell checker built in.
But I still miss the occasional typo.

If something needs to be the best,
I print it off and read it through in another room.

Les

[dix]

Plus I use firefox with a spell checker built in.

For some reason that only every works on the off chance for me. And my spelling is terrible so it really needs to be checked.

Dix.

[les]

If I am really unsure about an unfathomable spelling I google it.

Firefox has a neat trick of opening a new tab with a wheel click.
So copy and paste is a doddle.

Dix highlight a word right click and see if check spelling is ticked



Les

[dix]

Ah, you need to add the dictionary's separately.

Works now.

Dix.

[janmb]

Notice that the first letter of the first word in each sentance is capitalized?

I believe you meant "sentence"?



I completely agree though, sufficiently bad spelling or grammar can kill otherwise great work. But in the end of the day, please remember that all this is entirely voluntary work on the part of the authors - which in turn kinda makes any rant or whine moot.