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The Grammar Wench's Contest Rant
Author: Jody Wallace
Original Publication Date in Love Notes: November 2001
I’ve got a gripe, and you may share it. Conversely, my airing of it in such
a combative way might make you mad. In fact, you may be one of the perpetrators
of my current peeve: people who think they know grammar and mechanics but do
not. It wouldn’t matter if these people had no contact with or influence over
me, but sometimes — like in the case of contest judges — they do.
I’m tired of getting my much-awaited contest results back with low scores
in grammar and mechanics that I don’t deserve! “Be sure you get a critique
partner to look over your manuscript before you send it out.” (Always smart,
but when the judge points out no typos or other errors.) “Watch out for run-on
sentences — you know, the really long ones?” “Editors frown when you don’t
use enough commas.” “You are very wordy. Editors don’t like words.”
Well, thinks my reader, you’re certainly full of your little self, aren’t
you? Maybe these fine, hard-working contest judges are simply giving you some
advice you need to be taking? What makes you so right and them so wrong?
Simply this: grammar and mechanics, for the most part, are not a matter of
opinion. Diss my dialogue. Tell me my opening is boring. Point out that I’m
telling and not showing. I’ll thank you for the observation and work on it.
But don’t, and I mean don’t, tell me a word is misspelled that is not. Don’t
tell me I have run-on sentences when I do not. Don’t sprinkle commas through
my story that aren’t supposed to be there. And don’t give me a low score in
grammar and mechanics without sufficient explanation! You’ll just convince me
that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and all your hard work on my
submission will have been wasted.
Alright, I feel a little better now. I’m not in this boat alone, although
those of you in here with me might want to toss me overboard by now. Those of
you who are helping me paddle the boat sent in many supporting examples when I
polled you, and here are the most commonly mentioned errors in contest judge (or
contest entrant) grammar and mechanics:
1) Its/it’s. Its is possessive; it’s means “it is”. Get it straight.
In fact, go brush up on the general rules for plurals, possessives and plural
possessives. One of my respondents said she saw as much confusion in this area
as she did with commas in general. Speaking of which...
2) Single commas between compound verbs. Don’t put them there! Don’t put
them in your story, and don’t stick them in mine. Harbrace allows for
infrequent use of a single comma to emphasize distinction between the parts of
the predicate, but it’s rare, it’s technically incorrect, and you’re not
E.M. Forster. Frankly, this is the most common error I see.
Important Note: commas do not go everywhere you have a “natural pause”
when you are speaking. As one respondent pointed out, “There are approximately
nine reasons to use commas, and they should be used correctly — not because
someone thinks it’s a good place to put one.”
3) Definition of a run-on sentence: wrong, not long! It occurs when neither a
conjunction nor appropriate punctuation joins two independent clauses. Don’t
mark a sentence as run-on just because it’s over twenty words. Instead, say,
“My, this sentence is lengthy. Perhaps you could break it up into smaller
sentences so you don’t lose your reader?” And that’s not grammar, my
friend, that’s style.
4) Incorrect spelling corrections. If you think a word is misspelled, check
it with a dictionary first, especially if you don’t recognize it or think it
looks weird. For your information, “eking” is a word. It is the gerund form
of the verb “eke”. Both of those words look damn weird, but they’re not
spelled wrong.
5) Fragments: sometimes they are okay. Not all fragments are heinous errors,
although the longer the sentence is, the more likely it is to be a true fragment
instead of a stylistic fragment. Either way, don’t knock off for every single
fragment you see. Contemporary writers are quite fond of them and use them
knowingly.
6) Pronoun/antecedent agreement. Ok, so far I haven’t actually had a
contest judge correct me on this, but many contest entries contain instances of
p/a disagreement. Subject/verb disagreement is more rare and usually exists when
there is a clause of some sort in between the subject and its verb.
7) Homophones-R-Us. Many judges who responded to the survey noticed a lot of
homophones, sometimes called homonyms, and actual-word-typos in contest entries.
This is probably caused by an over-reliance upon spellcheck programs, because I
don’t want to think that folks actually don’t know the difference between
“there” and “their”. An example of a common typo would be “from” and
“form”. Be cautious and don’t let your fingers get ahead of your
brain.
8) Stylistic preferences that get allocated to the grammar and mechanics
category. Judges, make sure that the score you allot is actually based on
grammar and mechanics and not your personal preferences in sentence structure,
vocabulary, point of view, that sort of thing. I’m thrilled with every person
who helped me with this article, but I asked for “grammar and mechanics issues
in contests’ and initially received several lists of general pet peeves
instead, like wordiness or passive phrasing or head hopping. To me, this hints
that there is a general uncertainty about what parts of writing, exactly,
comprise grammar and mechanics. A person’s story and writing style can totally
blow even though his or her grammar and mechanics are clean.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve been a contest judge and I know how hard
they work and how unpaid they are. I know how few rewards come to judges after
all that labor, and I think it’s great when people volunteer to help out. But,
judges, keep your Harbrace, your Strunk & White or your Chicago
Manual of Style close at hand. Grammar and mechanics are as close as you can
get to the two plus two equals four of the English language and should thus be
carefully tallied.
The same goes for you contestants. Don’t drive your judges, your editors or
your agents batty by disregarding the basic rules of English grammar and
mechanics. They matter. The plot and characters are certainly important, but if
somebody can’t interpret your meaning due to poor grammar and mechanics, you’re
not going to make a sale.
This is not to say that everything having to do with grammar and mechanics is
cut and dried. Take the serial comma, for example. Journalistic, or AP, style
says omit the comma before “and” in items in a series unless it’s needed
for clarity; academic style says never omit it. A savvy contest judge or
critique partner will be aware of these gray areas — or are those grey areas?
— and not mark off for them. British versus American spellings and other
nitpicky items are also murky areas for which a contestant should not be
penalized, although let it be noted that American publishing houses and editors
do prefer American style. Feel free to alert aspiring authors to that fact, but
don’t tell them they are “wrong” when they are not.
So that’s my rant for the month. If I have given you the urge to red-pen my
article and send it back to me, feel free! I probably mixed a modifier or two,
and I’m always happy to learn something new.
Some Web sites where you can conduct research, take quizzes and brush up on
grammar rules:
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