Day 111

Good grammar!

…

This is the sort that doesn’t leave the beta readers saying Good Grief! over and over.

But…

There is writing the way people sometimes speak, which is hard, good grammar, and the way it should be written. Especially in historical fiction, I find that the lower classes in the 1700s and 1800s were literate enough to speak properly, after a fashion, when employed as servants and lesser staff, but the question would be as to what education level they reached.

Of course, it is a matter of deciding whether these characters will speak as they would have at the time, or in a manner the reader can understand.

Other than that, good writing is literate and understandable, with no overuse of adjectives that the common reader will not understand, and there should not be obscure similies and sayings, an order I sometimes forget to tell myself.

Perhaps it is an idea to keep several grammar references on the desk just in case you start having fights with the grammar checker, which I do from time to time. It doesn’t recognise the speech that I use, which is basically common knowledge, but not built into the grammar checker.

Grammar checkers are like artificial intelligence; it is only as good as the person who programs it and gives it its grammar examples.

When running it across a 500-page document, and its eccentricities start flaring, it gets a little annoying, particularly when you can’t turn it off. Still, it picked up quite a few errors that
I didn’t, and I guess that left me a little miffed.