How important is grammar?

It is clear that my style of writing won't fit this forum. I do my best to write complete sentences and I try to punctuate with commas and word quotes where something is quoted. You are correct that I will not go the extra mile to change the way I write, it has served me well up until now. I will not be submitting any additional stories. I have a part 5 of Sara's Paddle completed. If a member would like to read it in IT'S RAW form please send me a message and I will be happy to email it to you.

Grammar itself is probably not as important as punctuation. Nowadays most people don't care whether you write, "You and I," or "You and me," in the 'correct' place.

Punctuation, however, is a different matter. The purpose of punctuation is purely and simply to make the meaning clear.

Consider the difference between, "Mother Theresa is at the door," and "Mother, Theresa is at the door."

Now look at the following:

Come here he said. She walked slowly towards him. Get over my knee now young lady he ordered. Do I have to she whined? as tears glistened in her eyes. You know I have to do this he replied. I know.

It's difficult to follow. But a few changes make the meaning clearer:

"Come here" he said.

She walked slowly towards him.

"Get over my knee now young lady" he ordered.

"Do I have to?" she whined as tears glistened in her eyes.

"You know I have to do this" he replied.

"I know."

Isn't that clearer? It is not yet perfect, but the editors would happily add the missing commas etc. Just the simple addition of quotation marks round the words actually spoken, and a blank line between the different characters' actions has made this so much better and easier to follow.

You say you, "have no reason at my age to try to learn the rules of punctuation."

No-one is saying you need a degree in English Language to write stories, but to be a writer, you do need at least need to know the basics.

Personally, I enjoyed your serial and even commented to that effect. I hope you continue writing, and striving to improve, which is something all writers should do. Any writer who thinks s/he doesn't need to work at it any more, might as well give up!

As said above, the key concept is clarity, and that is what punctuation does ... it clarifies.

There are 2 distinct issues involved here. The first is the generic question of whether grammar and punctuation are important in creative writing. I think that question has already been answered by a number of people and in summary the answer is that it is important to the extent that it aids clarity and provides a much more enjoyable reader experience as a consequence.

The second issue is specifically in regard to your own writing. We've already explained via email a couple of times now that we are only asking for a minimum level of grammar and punctuation to be provided. As everyone here will be aware by now the library admins and validaters willingly give up a lot of free time to ensure that items in the library are, to the best of our ability, presented with clear punctuation and grammar. We take a pride in the library overall and are at pains to show the content in its best light. The only thing we have asked you to do in effect is to enclose the dialogue in your stories within quotation marks, something that you clearly could do if you wanted but clearly choose not to.

Februs, the first time you asked me to start a new line for each change of speaker. I did that. You never told me I had to put speech quotes for each speaker also. [The following is about Part 5 that hasn't been published.] It would of been easier to insert speech quotes the first time I was writing the story. I most likely would of left a speaker or two out of the story so it wouldn't require as many quotes if they weren't directly involved in the spanking proceedures. I didn't know I needed speech quotes for each person only a new line and I added the new line as requested.

Look, It's your forum and I enjoy it. You make the rules and I don't mean to break or try to change them. I just don't agree with them. I feel my writing serves the purpose of arousing the reader. It isn't like my writing isn't readable. It may not meet your standards but I don't beleave it is confusing to read. I will remain a reader if you will allow me to.

Not correct. Flopsy emailed you before I had any contact with you and said:

I stand corrected. At the time she emailed me I didn't understand what double speech quotes were until they were pointed out when I submitted Part 5.

It's not a problem for me to not submit any more parts to the story. I tried story writing and I failed. Before I joined this forum I had never written a story. So at least I have experienced it. If you would rather remove my first 4 parts than leave the story unfinished I have no problem with that.

I've no idea why you would suggest this as we've clearly done everything we can to encourage you to write and gone to the trouble of editing the four parts that you sent us, adding paragraph breaks and quotation marks for you and correcting any other grammar and punctuation issues so that readers would be able to enjoy what you'd written.

I suggested it because the story is incomplete. I guess I could figure out how to make part 5 the end of the story if you like. I am willing to rewrite the last page to make the story end properly. It would require more editing on your part I'm sure, but that is your call. I just didn't want to leave readers thinking that more is coming when more isn't coming.

It's your story and we've encouraged you to write it but merely asked you to observe a minimum requirement of separating dialogue with a paragraph break and putting quotation marks around it. These suggestions were offered in a supportive and helpful way by flopsy under the assumption that they would be welcomed and quite frankly we were all somewhat surprised to find that it was such a major issue for you and one that has now spilled over onto the forum. When you continued to ignore our suggestions we politely requested that you resubmitted Part 5 of your story, having taking a significant amount of time correcting Parts 1 to 4 for you.

You are welcome to submit as many parts to your story as you wish and end it in whatever way you wish but we ask that you observe the very minimum requirements that we have suggested, none of which require a detailed knowledge of grammar or punctuation, merely a willingness to be reasonable.

spankdaddy
Will Henry is likewise my own favorite pre-internet spanking writer and I was surprised to hear that I had missed the fact that he did not use quotation marks (I assume this is American for speech marks) so I opened my copy of Spankmanship, kept always next to my computer and opened it at random to find the page was littered with quotation marks. Perhaps spankdaddy has a different edition.

As for paragraphing, after years of very light editing, I have concluded that whatever rules may exist for paragraphing are indecipherable and I go by the rule of thumb (regretably not really named after a Common Law dictum that one could beat one's wife with a stick no thicker than one's thumb) of starting a new paragraph every three sentences or so unless there is an excuse, such as a new speaker, to do it sooner. This does seem to make the text more readable and nobody has complained about my paragraphing.

However, don't get me started on the problems of commas.

Spankdaddy, if you send me at CFpub@ix.netcom.com the newest chapter of your epic I will insert quotation marks and forward it to the library.