{"id":548,"date":"2012-08-08T14:10:31","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T21:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/?p=548"},"modified":"2020-11-24T18:44:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T02:44:51","slug":"ur-grammer-sux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/?p=548","title":{"rendered":"Ur grammer sux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While we&#8217;re pretty tolerant of sloppy formatting here at BDP, since we know we&#8217;re just going to remove it all anyway for the e-book conversion process, we&#8217;re much less understanding when it comes to basic abuses of the English language. You don&#8217;t have to be perfect, especially when it comes to debatable issues such as commas, British vs. U.S. spelling, or capitalization (though please try to be consistent!)&#8211;but there are some usage mistakes that show an author just plain doesn&#8217;t care enough about his or her craft to make the writing presentable. Here are a few tips on things that make us pull out our feathers (even when we&#8217;re NOT molting):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Misspelling your own title. Or your own name. Seriously, WHY?<\/li>\n<li>Misuse of their\/they&#8217;re\/there.<\/li>\n<li>Misuse of it&#8217;s\/its. There are only two forms, please get them right! (There&#8217;s no ITS&#8217;). Here is a <a title=\"quiz\" href=\"http:\/\/grammar.ccc.commnet.edu\/grammar\/cgi-shl\/quiz.pl\/its_there_quiz.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">quiz<\/a> on both of these.<\/li>\n<li>Random apostrophe use. Did you know an <a title=\"IgNobel\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/1581086.stm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ig Nobel<\/a> was awarded to a defender of the lowly apostrophe? BDP aspires to the IgNobel Prize in Literature!<\/li>\n<li>Subject\/object issues. One of our editors studied Russian for 4 years and memorized many hundreds of case endings, so is rather annoyed when native English speakers cannot keep I\/me, she\/her, he\/him, or we\/us straight. (For the record, JK Rowling appears to have decided that &#8220;He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named&#8221; does not decline. Discuss&#8230; Would you say &#8220;I gave the wand to Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?&#8221;) Here is a nice <a title=\"pronouns\" href=\"http:\/\/grammar.ccc.commnet.edu\/grammar\/cases.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tutorial<\/a> on this subject (object?).<\/li>\n<li>Misuse of your own technical terms\/jargon. If you&#8217;re a physicist, please don&#8217;t mix up &#8220;<a title=\"magneton\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magneton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">magneton<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a title=\"magnetron\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magnetron\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">magnetron<\/a>,&#8221; or we will catch you and bite you with our bills. Similarly, in biology, please know how to format genus\/species names, and please spell them correctly and consistently. Escherichia&#8230;. see, that&#8217;s not so hard.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While you may argue that the story should take precedence over the rules of language&#8211;which it does&#8211;we cannot focus on the story if we are quacking in pain from an abundance of errors. If you&#8217;re a great storyteller but a wretched grammarian, please have an editor&#8211;not your wife, not your mom, and certainly not your dog, unless he&#8217;s Russian&#8211;go over the entire manuscript. Yes, the whole thing. When it&#8217;s beautiful up until Chapter 3 and then turns into a morass of errors, it just shows even more.<\/p>\n<p>Be kind to ducks: chek yer grammer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While we&#8217;re pretty tolerant of sloppy formatting here at BDP, since we know we&#8217;re just going to remove it all anyway for the e-book conversion process, we&#8217;re much less understanding when it comes to basic abuses of the English language. You don&#8217;t have to be perfect, especially when it comes to debatable issues such as [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/1333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitingduckpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}