Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
I'll overlook some poor grammar if the story is good. But it has to be a really good story, because there are other good stories out there with good grammar. Bad grammar is like potholes on the road, it makes the experience less smooth. Of course grammarians are always wrong - eventually.
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Actually, great stories are rare, with or without good grammar. Good grammar on the other hand is not so unusual.
That's one of the things I noticed in judging contests: the most polished stories were mediocre. The very few which were wonderful (while they were not illiterate) were always second tier in grammar, punctuation and formatting.
The thing about bad grammar, spelling, typos and other silly mistakes, is that when the story fails, these are the easy things to notice and point out. And it's easy to claim that they are the cause of the problem, when they might be more a result of the problem.
For instance: A writer with cloudy, inexact ideas will naturally use passive voice. She uses it not because it's a bad habit or an error, but because it is the very best way to express her foggy thinking.
Now, sometimes forcing a writer to adhere to rules sharpens up their skills otherwise. For instance, training a writer to notice when she uses passive voice (and maybe forbidding her from using it) will force her to think deeper about her ideas. But it's just a bandaid really. If someone really is a foggy, lazy thinker, she will simply rearrange sentences in ways that conform to the rule, but don't deepen the idea in any way at all.
Camille