As a Freelance Editor, what is your attitude toward posts with poor punctuation and grammar?
I do read answers with mistakes in punctuation and grammar. There is often excellent information to be gleaned from the writer — if I have the time and I’m willing to wade through the mistakes to find it.
My real problem lies with posts written in a huge block, with no thought to any paragraph breaks. It’s only compounded further when there are also punctuation and grammar mistakes, but for me that’s a secondary issue.
Writers need to take responsibility for HOW they post their important thoughts and ideas. Paragraphing adds believability, and readers will take them more seriously. It just isn’t that hard to break writing into paragraphs!
A new thought or idea? New Paragraph!
Someone new is speaking? New Paragraph!
Plain and simple! Easy-Peasy!
If I have to choose between reading a post with NO paragraph separations, and reading a Post with TOO MANY paragraphs … nine out of ten times, I will read the post with too many paragraphs, even if the writing isn’t as good. I know the breaks will give me time to think and breathe …
Maybe it’s because I’m an editor, I don’t know. What I do know is, when I see a post written in a huge block, I don’t want to read … I want to run.
If a lot of people feel like I do, think of all the extra readers those writers are missing out on …
Published Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018
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Hello, C.J.
I write mostly poetry -- some prose. However, I find that often when I compose directly into the comment box, lines will combine and attempts to straighten it out very often make it worse. Hence for longer posts I try to write them in another program, then copy and paste. However, even this is fraught withvdanger, for either on the paste or in transmission, formatting will be lost or garbled.
This happened recently with a poem of three quatrains. No matter what I tried it appeared as.a twelve line block. I think there is a software conflict conflict somewhere and I haven't been been able to sort it out. Sometimes, even when I have disabled autocorrect I think it turns itself on as the document leaves my machine.
As for punctuation, mine is often idiosyncratic. I use punctuation as a guide to meter and semantics, which I'm sure irritates some proofreader and editors. Given this view of punctuation, I sometimes may be heavy on commas at other times omit them when the letter of the law demands them. Similarly I may occasionally use a semicolon where propriety might require a period, and vice versa.
I'll close now. I hope you don't think I need a psychiatrist rather than an editor/proofreader.
As I am about to pst, SS won't allow me to scroll to proof for typos.
Alas!