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Paula gets irritated by GPS errors i.e. Grammar, Punctuation
and Spelling.
Your going to have to
watch you’re grammar! Does this make you cringe? It ought to! How many
times have you seen ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ used wrongly? Or Their, They’re and
There? I can cope with this kind of error on Facebook and Twitter – after all,
people are often dashing off quick responses, and we all make errors and/or
typos.
I can usually forgive GPS errors in blogs too, since many
bloggers are not aspiring to be authors. However, if I see this kind of error
in a book blurb (as I did recently), or worse still, in the text of a published
book, it’s a huge turn-off for me. All it says is that (a) either the author
doesn’t have a clue about correct GPS or (b) he/she hasn’t bothered to do a
thorough and careful edit or (c) has an ‘editor’ who hasn’t a clue either!
I firmly believe that, as authors, it is our responsibility to
write correct English. By that, I mean we should know and obey the basic rules
of GPS. Admittedly, some can be broken, but we need to know which can and which
can’t.
I’ll stick my neck out and say the rules concerning
apostrophes should never be broken, but frequently are. I’ve recently seen
‘Lilians’ hand’, and ‘The Bartlett’s were going on vacation’. In the latter
case, the author (admittedly not a published author but one who writes a lot of
online fan-fiction) replied to someone (not me) who pointed out that it should
be ‘Bartletts’ saying ‘It looks better with an apostrophe’. I was speechless!
There are plenty of grammar websites where authors can check
on GPS rules. Although I was fortunate to be educated at a time when there was
great emphasis on grammar, I still have to check on things sometimes. I just
wish some other authors would do so too!
What grammar or punctuation errors irritate you the most?
I feel a huge Oops coming on! :)
ReplyDeleteFor me it's the wear/where; their/there/they're; hear/here etc. It only needs a little thought usually.
At least you know the ones you sometimes get wrong, which is more than some authors do! :-)
DeleteThey all bother me, even though I have noticed I occasionally make mistakes with "it's" and "its." But I usually catch it in time.I don't really care where I see them.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure everyone makes errors at times, but I do try not to be a grammar Nazi when I'm looking at FB posts!
DeleteI'm pretty good a GPS, but the auto correct on my computer thinks it's smarter than me sometimes. I also should try to avoid naming characters with names get end in s, as in Hawkins'.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere reliable that it's modern-okay to skip the final comma in a series of three clauses.
My hardest is knowing when to leave descriptive words alone and when to hyphenate.
I'm never sure whether a name ending in s should just have an apostrophe or another s after the apostrophe.
DeleteThe 'Oxford comma' in the series of 3 (or more) clauses or words has been discussed over and over again, and I think it's still 'optional'!
With the prevalent use of smart phones and texting these days, I just worry that we are raising and encouraging an entire generation of kids who have NO idea how to communicate using proper grammar or punctuation. To my old-fashioned way of thinking, even if you're sending a text or an e-mail you still need to use capital letters and periods/punctuation for sentences.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started on auto-correct and people who can't even take the time to double check their messages for accuracy before hitting send. Is the world in that much of a hurry that you can't take two seconds to scan through what you've written? Or what you think you've written.
The first thing I do with a new phone is turn off the auto-correct, which drives me crazy! And you're right about today's kids and their 'shortcut' communication. All the more reason for teaching it in schools!
Delete