Gaid 2 riting gud: Srsly (episod 1)
#7 of Srsly
Gaid 2 riting gud: Srsly (episod 1)
Duz u want 2 rite gud? Laik teh bestest evar? al u hav 2 du is fOllOw dis gaid! Srsly!
1. iF u ever tink dat riting laik diz iz akkseptable u r fail
I could tell you all about how 'I' frequently goes before 'E', and split infinitives, l33t text and putting asterisks into your text for those all important *sigh*s. If I have to do that I've already lost the battle. There are other guides for that. This guide is not about these things. It is about you.
You're not writing for you. You are writing for the reader. You are coming up with plots, stories, characters, witty turns of phrase and excellent names for your own benefit. Putting prose to pixel is about communicating with your audience. If you fail to do this then you have failed to write something worthwhile. Key elements in communicating effectively are grammar, spelling, punctuation and clear phrasing. Learn these on your own, we call them 'craft'.
If someone points out that you've made a grammar error and you say 'Well it doesn't matter' then I sincerely hope you put the keyboard down forever and return to the rest of your regularly scheduled life. This goes double, or possibly triple, if you think someone else will edit it for you.
There is only one correct response to an error you've made, 'Yes, I agree, I made an error'. If you actually made an error, that is. Go get a book on grammar or find a web page you like for reference and generate your own personal usage of the English language. Discover on your own what is 'correct' because there is no English Law agency out there to put you in jail - there are just other people who can or cannot read your work easily. Feel free to argue the details of what is and isn't an error if you think you know what you're doing.
If you intentionally broke a rule, generally to try and achieve some kind of stylistic effect, that's fine. But it's still wrong. Don't pretend it isn't, but feel free to fight vehemently in favour of your intentional error, because if it's not worth defending in an argument it wasn't worth making intentionally in the first place.
Your audience is there to read something. Not to puzzle out Byzantine arrangements of commas. This also applies to fonts, pretty colours, ridiculous file formats and every other hoop you make your audience leap through. They don't leap through hoops to read your work, you leap through hoops so they read your work.
If an audience has to go through an obstacle course, don't whine about it when they refuse to read your work and bitch about it. You're the one who made them do it, after all. Take your punishment like a man.
This work is hereby released into the Public Domain. To view a copy of the public domain dedication, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.
That means you can do whatever the hell you want with Srsly, from ripping it off entirely to 'quoting' it in your own guide to rewriting it. Please feel free and encouraged to make copies for your writing newsletter, blog, or anything at all. If you would like to link back to me, which is nice and polite but by no means compulsory, please use 'http://www.furaffinity.net/user/foozzzball/' or my e-mail address, [email protected]'.