It seems that way to me too. In recent years, I feel like I've been seeing more and more spelling and grammar mistakes in writing, and even
Huge hailstones have battered part of Australia, with more "severe" weather >to set to hit a major city tonight.
Huge hailstones are bettering parts of New South Wales, with an emergency >warning declared.
I don't know they were a lot smarter... but I'm specificially looking at english skills rather than IQ.. If I had to hazzard it with no real data, english reading and comprehension has been in decline since the mid to late 70s and its more recently fallen off a precipice...
Re: Re: Community
By: Spectre to Adept on Mon Oct 03 2022 07:32 am
I don't know they were a lot smarter... but I'm specificia
english skills rather than IQ.. If I had to hazzard it wit
english reading and comprehension has been in decline sinc
late 70s and its more recently fallen off a precipice...
It seems that way to me too. In recent years, I feel like I've
hecking the work just don't have good English skills. And at t
.
Nightfox
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It seems that way to me too. In recent years, I feel like I've
hecking the work just don't have good English skills. And at t
Actually, what did you expect?
A quality Magazine with original content and a proofreading and
tech revision team is about ten times more expensive than one that
lacks proofing or which only buys articles from foreigner
publications and has an underpaid Mexican translate them. Guess
which magazines you may find in press stands and which ones you
need to dig for in obscure places.
It seems that way to me too. In recent years, I feel like I've been seeing more and more spelling and grammar mistakes in writing, and even sometimes in printed material (magazines, signs, etc.). It's like they don't have anyone proofread it, or those checking the work just don't have good English skills. And at the same time, people get really annoyed when you try to point out the bad spelling/grammar, or if you're genuinely confused by what you read, they thiink you're making fun of them or something.
Actually, what did you expect?
For native English speakers, at least (and I live in the US, where English is the predominant language), I'd think most people would have a fairly good grasp on the language. But I often see simple mistakes such as people using the wrong version of their/they're/there, your/you're, etc., and using an apostrophe for a plural, etc.. Things like that seem like simple mistakes where I'd think at least native speakers would know better.
I don't know they were a lot smarter... but I'm specificially looking english skills rather than IQ.. If I had to hazzard it with no real d english reading and comprehension has been in decline since the mid t late 70s and its more recently fallen off a precipice...
It seems that way to me too. In recent years, I feel like I've been seeing more and more spelling and grammar mistakes in writing, and even sometimes in printed material (magazines, signs, etc.). It's like they don't have anyone proofread it, or those checking the work just don't
have good English skills. And at the same time, people get really
annoyed when you try to point out the bad spelling/grammar, or if you're genuinely confused by what you read, they thiink you're making fun of
them or something.
Actually, what did you expect?
To be frank, better.
The errors I see are so basic anyone casting an eye over the text should
be able to pick it up. I can get with the idea when you write something, and edit it, you'll have a tendency to read what you thought you wrote, that's why there are proofreaders or in fact non-proofreaders also.
If you can't get it right, and you have no form of reader proof or otherwise,
I find it will help quite significantly if you read it to yourself aloud. You'll often find things that get overlooked otherwise.
Spec
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I come from a tech documentation background, so when I think of bad mistakes, I think of functional mistakes. If you assign a wrong
number to a part or a diagram, you can cause a lot of trouble
for the user.
Then there are the instruction sets you cannot replicate for cheap in your home. Maybe you are writing some tutorial for a specific piece of equipment you are very familiar with, but you don't happen to have
nearby by the time you are writing, and since deadlines are a bitch
you end up finishing the piece crouched in the backseat of a bus.
extra times. Keep in mind I have not started about examining plot consistency yet.
My gripe is the current industry of written fiction pretty much expects authors to deliver a publishing grade work to the publishing
house. This means a given author is to deliver a text which is 95%
ready for publication, in a formatting determined by the publisher,
in exchange for a 85% probability of the publisher sending
Think of it. The author is supposed to accomplish a titanic task in exchange for a meager probability of it being read. Basically,
we are asking writers to do work for value of 250*bucks in
exchange of scraps. OF COURSE quality is going to suffer
I come from a tech documentation background, so when I think of bad mistakes, I think of functional mistakes. If you assign a wrong
number to a part or a diagram, you can cause a lot of trouble
for the user.
That seems reasonable, and I'd expect in some kind of tech documentation the author would know more on what they are writing about to make the work functionally useful. Diagrammatical errors I'd associate less with an author
as most authors wouldn't be the illustrative author. So there might be a disconnect between the author of the text and the artist.
Then there are the instruction sets you cannot replicate for cheap in your
home. Maybe you are writing some tutorial for a specific piece of equipment you are very familiar with, but you don't happen to have nearby by the time you are writing, and since deadlines are a bitch
you end up finishing the piece crouched in the backseat of a bus.
This sounds like a mash between someone not doing it as a primary role, and trying to compete in that market. I know nothing about deadlines, never had to work to any, at least not since high school. It strikes me as poor time management if you need the device on hand and you no longer have it, or its at home and you're on a bus for some reason. Shrug, I hear what you're saying
but, it seems you're either in the wrong job, or need a better focus on that job. I don't have any fantastic answer for this.
extra times. Keep in mind I have not started about examining plot consistency yet.
This one seems cut and dried to me, if the author of some fictional work can't keep the story straight, how is anyone else going to manage it? I'm not
sure proofreaders are going to help that much if at all.
My gripe is the current industry of written fiction pretty much expects
authors to deliver a publishing grade work to the publishing
house. This means a given author is to deliver a text which is 95% ready for publication, in a formatting determined by the publisher,
in exchange for a 85% probability of the publisher sending
This does appear to be unrealistic. Times change I s'pose, but I'd have thought the authors job is to tell an entertaining coherent story, that's as good as they can make it. After that you'd feed it to your "proofreader", get it typeset, re-read and head of to print or publish. It's a waste of time
if they haven't even decided they like before even worrying about the subsequent details.
Think of it. The author is supposed to accomplish a titanic task in exchange for a meager probability of it being read. Basically,
we are asking writers to do work for value of 250*bucks in
exchange of scraps. OF COURSE quality is going to suffer
Short stories for the most part and I might be wrong, make me reminisce about
pulp fiction. If thats the market you're in, then the strike rate has always been low even in the days of yore. Some ~90 hit the fireplace without going anywhere so this is not a new phenomenon but the extra work required going by
the above is pointless if that is the case. Used to be a thing about getting
something, anything published by someone being an accomplishment in its own right. Perhaps you need a level of that to keep you at it, without looking at
it as a "job". I think in order to make any kind of serious money in the writing field you need to either be really lucky and or be truly exceptional at it, the money makers seem to be the exception, not the rule.
Spec
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/dev/null. A number of Editors for big pulp magazines outright say that they are unlikely to read past the first paragraph of each manuscript.
The name of the game for them is Burning Through as Many Manuscripts
as Possible. With so many manuscripts on their desks, anything that does not look fine from the get go is going into the trash bin.
I think most good authors will generate fiction free from gaping plot holes, but that does not mean you need not look for those. When
one is writing, things are christal clear in his head, but you have
to check your ideas are conveyed to the readers properly.
After being exposed to publisher's selection processes, I no longer think quality is what makes a money maker in the pulp market. I have seen
quite a lot fine manuscripts kicked out so the Editor could work
on mediocre ones instead. There is a lot of hidden criteria for
selecting what gets worked on and what gets burnt at the stake,
but I'd say if you write an average piece that can be sent to the
press ASAP, you have much better chances of having the story bought
than if you write a masterpiece which needs some extra adjustements
to fit this month's magazine pagecount.
....To maximise your chances of any given story being
used you'll need to tailor your efforts to what fits in the publication you're sending scripts to.
Spec
You'd expect that they'd have guidlines for word/page counts going in. I'd also expect that some will sit on the back burner waiting for a time when the
page count fits goldilocks free page numbers in the "current" edition. So it may take some time before anything appears to happen.
This brings to mind the saying "You need to know your audience."
See, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine accepts, teoretically, flash fiction pieces, but I have never seen them publish flash fiction.
selected 2, yours is gonna end up in /dev/null. There is not such
a thing as saving a good story this month for future use in this
industry.
My point is that the odds are so low that the mathematical profit expectancy of a given story is abyssmal, so it is just natural
for quality to degrade. This dawned on me once I found an author,
See, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine accepts,
teoretically, flash fiction pieces, but I have never seen
them publish flash fiction. [...]
Then there is the issue that a given magazine might publish
a fixed number of stories for ech given length (say, 2
flash pieces and 5 short stories). If you send a flash
piece and the editor has already selected 2, yours is gonna
end up in /dev/null. [...]
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