I find stories edited by linguistic & self proclaimed grammar experts tend sound too mechanical, & don't sound real. They loose their flair, style, & emotion.
Can you imagine if the language experts/critics had their way & edited a story like "Tom Sawyer"? It would have sounded more like a history textbook, or technical manual of the era & area rather than a cool story.
Don't pay attention those self proclaimed language experts who seem to think it is their duty to actively police the internet & every written word for the slightest error, or for anything that doesn't fit their personal opinion of perfect language.
Those people who totally freak out over over anything that doesn't fit their version of the language are only 1-2% of most readers. It seems like more than that only because those language police tend to scream & rant a lot.
It's interesting to note that in most of their rants about errors & incorrect grammar, I see plenty of their own errors or poor grammar. I think the last time someone posted about someone's spelling or grammar here, they actually spelled it "grammer". Normally most of us would ignore such an error, but because the person was whining about other people's errors, I felt it was important to point out their own while they were demanding their version of perfect language.
I have to thank the language police though, because they forced us to create our own Usenet newsgroups (before the internet we had the Usenet), & later the internet version of Betty's.
Back in the Usenet days, almost every interesting topic started our OK, but would quickly filled up with dozens to hundreds of posts of people whining about each other typos & grammar, or insulting each other over it.
When the internet started, boards (BBS) where people could freely post & interact with each other, they also quickly filled up with the same kind of nonsense. It got to be just about anywhere a regular person could post something, it was being trolled by these language police & critics who would nail anyone who made the slightest mistake.
Of course this annoyed everyone else, so every thread that had a critic, also had rows & rows of pissed off people arguing, & insulting each other over it.
As someone who was used to communicating with people from all over the world through my Ham radio hobby, & loved it, I found this situation very disappointing, & not very fun at all.
So when we started our Usenet groups, & later our internet boards, our FIRST rule was that no English critics & teachers were allowed or tolerated.
This opened up the entire world for us. Anybody could post what's on their mind rather than being silent for fear that someone would always whine about their typo or grammar. One could read entire threads & stories without rows of whining polluting the topic.
These critics fail to realize that some may not be as familiar with using a keyboard as much as others, or English may not be their primary language. Some of our most fun posters & stories come from people who can't type or write well, or are not the best with English. Golly, we would have to wipe out 90% of our stories, if we deleted the ones with typos or non-standard grammar. Most of them would be pretty boring if they were fixed to perfect English. Their quirks give them their unique style & personal touch.
It's all a moot point anyway. Every region of my country, Canada, the UK, & Australia have their own versions of "Proper English". And the teachers in each region teach their version of their language as their proper version to their students. Even different areas of the UK, speak slightly different English, & that sounds much different than what they speak in Ireland.
Then, there was a time shortly after the turn of this century, that more people than ever finally got used to using a keyboard more. But that didn't last long. With the arrival of touch screens, spell check, & auto-correct, more people abandoned the keyboard, or had less motivation to try to use one.
We now have an alarming amount of people who regularly get online, but almost never touched a keyboard. If there's not an app for that, they're lost & don't know how to get anywhere or do anything.
So now we're in a spot where average typing & writing skills worldwide have fallen back to 1970s levels. These people will not post or type anything, or not more than a few words. If everything they try to type will be criticized or can't compete to what they usually read, they don't want to bother. What they usually read, has been proofread, edited, or sanitized several times to seem almost perfect, but it also lost all the emotion & style to me.
We don't want to discourage those people, or they will never get around to trying. You can't learn to ride a bicycle or swim unless you try.
Farmer Brown went to the city to sell his produce. When he wanted to stop for lunch, the only restaurants nearby were high end bistros or places where he couldn't pronounce most of the stuff on the menu. He had sold his produce so could afford the prices, but just didn't feel comfortable there. He was dressed like Farmer Brown too, so got stared at & treated poorly there.
He had rebuilt his tractor engine, maintains his truck himself, put the wiring & plumbing in his house, & built his barn. But there he was being treated like a fool or idiot.
So he had to eat his own produce, pack a lunch, or wait until he got into an area that served regular people.
Billy the ghetto boy loved art, & made lots of beautiful art himself. It sold well on street corners, booths, & outdoor festivals. He felt out of place in the big city museums. None of them would post his art, or much of the art he loved. He was almost a grandpa before any of his art would be in the big city museum.
"Mark Twain" books sold well because it was easy & fun to read by regular people. If it was edited, corrected, sanitized, & made grammatically correct, it probably would have been a popular play in New York, but the book wouldn't have sold very well.
That "raw" writing gives it soul, makes it fun & seem real.
A caveman called a rock "Ug". But across the river a caveman called it "Og". Who was correct? If you live in UG-land, if someone said "Og", you'd know he was from Og-land. Unless you never met anyone from across the river you would know "Og" means "Ug". But I'm absolutely certain there were no tribal wars over what they called a rock.
Topic: Looking for an Editor.... (Read 3277 times)
