Grammar

[leavethesky]

Today's rant inspired by this in an otherwise very nice piece of fic: ...I'm just being scared that you won't feel the same and that I'll end up loosing your friendship.

Okay, I've seen this mistake so many times in the last few weeks that I'm assuming it's now epidemic. Also, it's getting to that point where it looks almost normal to me.

People, you cannot 'loose' your heart to someone. You 'lose' it. The bonds she tied around your wrists may be 'loose' but you 'lose' yourself in her eyes. Right? Help me out here because the mistakes are really starting to look normal to me. I'm starting to question myself. And even MS Word lets this sentence go without a green or red squiggly underline.



/rant

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/thrace_/]

It's just...as soon as you get one writer to understand about its/it's, your/you're, lose/loose, etc., ten more writers crop up in his/her place. Mostly they stay confined to that Unholy of Unholies, fanfiction.net, thank god.

[leavethesky.livejournal.com]

When we can keep it confined/quarantined to fanfic.net I have no problem, but it has jumped the barrier out into the real fanfic world and is infecting EVERYTHING. we must put our best scientific minds to work on this. and you're right. our work is never done.

The worst part is that it has ruined some otherwise good fic for me.

[sravenk.livejournal.com]

Oh, the its/it's fumble is my very favourite (read: makes me tear my hair out at the root!). I have known folks I consider to be very good writers whose work I couldn't bring myself to read just because of that nagging little mistake. It breaks my heart when that happens!

[cheyne55.livejournal.com]

I'm guilty of the it's/its thing and it's not because I don't know any better. I think when I'm writing, I'm thinking faster than I can type and, in my haste, I put that apostrophe in there because, in my frenzied mind, 'its' should be possessive. Usually possessive denotes an apostrophe. It's only when I read it over (if I catch it) that I realize my mistake. And sometimes I have glazed right over it and posted the story anyway, and I don't see it until it's already online, out there for everyone else to see it, too. Which is embarrassing. I try to pay more attention now but mistakes still get through. But that's probably why it's smart to have a beta, which I don't. I just know that when I finally get to the end of a story, I've read it over so many times, it could be gibberish and it would look like a masterpiece (okay, not really, but you get my point, I hope) to me and I just want to post it and have it be gone by that point. I don't stop to think that maybe it needs a neutral person to give it a look and point out the obvious.
I can't and won't presume to speak for anyone else out there but that's how it is for me.
It's good to read posts like this though because it reminds me to pay more attention to the 'little things' that I wouldn't ordinarily think would turn a reader away.

[leavethesky.livejournal.com]

We all make mistakes. Hell, I wrote an entire paper recently making the its/it's mistake simply because I'd been looking at the word too long and decided that it couldn't possibly be right the other way around. It's like some sort of weird tunnel vision you get when you've been writing too long and too much. But some of these grammatical errors become sort of epidemic. One person whose story is popular misuses or misspells a word and many of the inexperienced writers copy them. Srsly. I went from seeing the loose/lose problem every once in a while to seeing a glut of them in a very short time. Same with the shudder/shutter issue. The other problem is that once you archive a story, it's very difficult to change. A really good Xena story I recently read had the shudder/shutter problem in the first two sections and corrected it later. Probably couldn't get the archivist to swap out the first two sections or didn't think about it.

I know the problem with betas -- I want to publish immediately and they can be time-consuming, not to mention the trust issue. I don't use them either, but I do have my GF look over everything I write to catch any obvious mistakes. It always helps to have a second pair of eyes. But even they can't catch everything. I suck as a beta, btw. Unless it's something glaringly obvious, I get too involved in the story to proofread well.

Also, your fic wasn't among the fics that inspired this post if that helps at all.

[sravenk.livejournal.com]

Aw, Cheyne, baby, I didn't mean to sound so severe. I get grumpy about the mistake because sometimes I make it, too. I remember one time I was snarking on something in zennie's LJ and made a mistake in my own snark (steal/steel), which The Zen Master rightly snarked on in return. Served me right! But yes, sometimes when it is a consistent mistake, I do find myself turned away by it; I can't help it.

[cheyne55.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm...I think I must not have come across the way I was intending in my above post. I didn't think anyone was specifically targeting my fics (although it was okay if they were - as I stated on a separate post - I don't mind criticism as long as I can learn something from it). I don't consider what you or leavethesky or anyone else here posted really criticism. I was just openly admitting that I am guilty of the its/it's thing and why that possibly was and that I was grateful for posts like this because I find them very helpful. If I came off sounding defensive, I didn't mean to. I have much thicker skin than that.
I was just throwing in my two cents about the its/it's issue, I wasn't taking anything personally.
Truly.
I also get annoyed with reading a fic that has repeated grammatical errors and it does take away from an otherwise good story. So, even though I am guilty of making some of the same mistakes other writers do, it doesn't mean that I don't want to tear my hair out (the white ones, mostly...might as well be productive), too, when I notice the same errors over and over.

[sravenk.livejournal.com]

No, you came across very clearly, I thought. I just feel bad sometimes when I get overly zealous about grammar. It doesn't stop me from shooting my mouth off anyway, but I feel bad for a second. ;)

[leavethesky.livejournal.com]

You didn't sound defensive. Your comment just happened to come in with all of the apologetic emails. Sorry if I sounded weird. I remember thinking, "I don't remember any grammatical weirdness in Cheyne's fics. wtf is she talking about?" but I'm so fried I can't keep anything straight...so to speak. Sorry for the confusion.

[ralst.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes and yes, but what does 'loosing' actually refer to? As my spellcheck insists that it's a word.

I used to have trouble with lose/loose but then I starting using the 'Loose Canons' test.

[leavethesky.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming its some sort of archaic thing, like "loosing the bonds of love" or loosing the hounds of war or something. The Loose Canons test? love it.

[replicarter22.livejournal.com]

3. To cast loose; detach: hikers loosing their packs at camp.

At least, according to dictionary.com.

[ralst.livejournal.com]

Okay. I think I'm now confused again *g*.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

In that case, the hitchhikers let loose their packs (unstrapped them and put them down), not lost them (losing).

[bodhi-chenrezig.livejournal.com]

Right there with you. It's one of my pet peeves.

[phryneateleusis.livejournal.com]

One of us! One of us!

I mean I wrote an entire 400 page behemoth just to illustrate the use good grammar.

[spudzilla.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of loosing your heart ON someone though.

[leavethesky.livejournal.com]

that sounds so pervy. as in, "I've got a heart on for you." ;)

[bamlkr.livejournal.com]

The one that really makes me gnaw my teeth and rip out my hair is who's/whose. This is mainly because a lot of writers who get the whole it's/its, your/you're thing for some reason keep f___ing up on who's/whose. (As for lose/loose, I try to convince myself that it's a typo.)

On a lighter note, one that just made me laugh was some person who wrote pendant instead of penchant.

And hey, I friended you. That's OK, right? :)