The postman always rings twice...

... but the LSF postman stings 56 times!

Having started my reading of the submissions in the latest challenge, I must say that we have another tough one to judge. Vote early and often!

Now the trick is to find time to read them all and vote on each and every one. Of course I have to spend time recording my guesses as to who wrote what and see how right I am at the end of the voting period. I have managed to read several all ready and found them all unique in their own right and highly enjoyable.

Well done to all the writers involved, if you win/place/show all the better but I would hope everyone had fun writing regardless of whether you get 1 vote or a 1000. Kudos to all those writers and to those readers and voters who get to enjoy the letters.

One interesting issue is trying to work out whether spelling or grammar mistakes were deliberate! In a story, if someone for instance says, "The dog would'nt stay in it's basket", that's two mistakes. In fictional letters it could be a clever way of conveying information about the writer.

A very interesting point indeed, barretthunter. I suppose if the letter is from a schoolchild or servant (in Victorian or Edwardian times), for example, then one could assume some level of ignorance of grammar/punctuation/spelling. Otherwise, I think we need to look at the rest of the letter to decide. Is it supposedly from a lawyer or doctor or teacher? We would expect them to be well-educated.

Having said that, I have known maths teachers who couldn't spell or punctuate! And as for teachers of P.E. or Cookery - least said, soonest mended!

I only do the mistake thing with children. What I do with adults is use bad grammar instead. Once again, it depends on the intelligence of the character(s) a writer creates.

barretthunter has a strong point there though. I've used it's in place of its a few times. I caught them, because I go through my stories at least 5 or 6 times. Also the 'nt happens when it's supposed to be n't. It's just one of dose tings ya no?

I can see spelling and grammar mistakes working in virtually any letter. After all, most people only do one draft of a letter, few people ask others to proofread letters, and few letter writers are perfect.

A few typos and the occasional grammar mistakes works for me. Better yet, the consistent grammar mistake. If someone has a catch phrase of "Alright its on" and uses that several times in the letter I'd expect to see it always be "Alright" (as opposed to "All right") and "its" (as opposed to "it's") whenever the phrase is used.

Goodgulf

I think everyone must be following the advice njrick gave at the beginning of this thread as we can see over 5000 votes have been cast to date and we are not yet at the end of the first week. That is great to see and wonderful to know all the work put in by the various writers is being read and appreciated.

Keep reading and voting folks, we still have 18 days left so if one reads 3 stories a day, all can be read before voting closes.

When Marlowe speaks, people listen... which, quite frankly, is how it should be.

LMAO...I would expect no different.