Hi, all,

kukuru@worldnet.att.net wrote:

Jamie and Bridget Wilde wrote:

I wonder how long before this thread is going to be banned.

You're askin' the wrong guy...

I hope not before people read this post of mine.

Heck, I'm not even *that* picky, but nothing will turn me off faster
than a fic that features grossly OOC characters (with no justification
for said OOCness), a weak (read: contrived) or obviously pointless plot,

Bad plots and OOC are something I have no choice in 
living with, (except when I write, of course ^_^) 
but....

consistantly bad grammar and spelling mistakes, and bad formatting.

I hate bad grammar/punctuation/spelling/format simply because it makes a
'fic difficult or even painful to read. Why should I bother?

...As one of those who volunteered to be a reviewer 
for the Synopsis List, can I ask that writers *do* 
pay some heed to this part?  For most readers, they 
have a choice over what they read; I do not.  If 
someone submits their story to the list and it turns 
out to be one of the worst strings of consciousness 
ever composed by a writer, I must still read it.

All I ask are these four simple things:

1) Spell and grammar check your fic.  A 100K fic will 
   take two minutes to spell check and no great effort 
   on your part to do.  

   Grammar takes longer and more skill, but good 
   grammar makes you sound intelligent, and bad 
   grammar makes...well, I'm not here to insult 
   anyone. ^_^  You took the time to write it, 
   why not take the time to right it?

2) Leave one line of blank space between paragraphs, 
   as I am doing in this post.  (Very readable, ne?)
   We're not using paper, and the extra 200 carriage 
   returns aren't going to make your story that much 
   bigger in size, but _will_ go a long way to making 
   it readable, especially if I have to reformat it.  
   (For those who ignore suggestion #3, reformatting 
   is often necessary.) Many text editors will treat 
   an entire document as one paragraph if blank lines 
   are not left in; most text editors don't do this, 
   but a few do.

3) Keep the lines in your story to a maximum of 70 
   characters in length.  Wordwrapping is such an 
   eyesore when trying to read, and partial lines or
   single words cut off by themselves can interrupt 
   the flow of reading.

4) Use the standard ASCII set and send your fics as 
   plain text.  Use only " for doublequotes and ' for 
   singlequotes; many text readers and browsers 
   cannot handle other quotation marks or character 
   sets.  

These aren't that difficult a set of suggestions to 
implement, and will go a long way to making your 
story readable.  (You *do* want it read, right?)

Sorry to blather, but I felt it needed to be said.

Shunsuke
---
"Don't kill me, I'm too old to die."
                              - Major Bloodnok, 
                                _The Goon Show_



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