Has anyone's grammar ever turned you off from continuing a story even if it was promising?

[Rhonder]

Yeahhh, I'll usually only continue on if there are numerous grammar errors if it's either like... a friend's work who I want to support, or if I'm reading for a review or something. I've started many comics and seen like beautiful art and designs with low subs and thought "wow, how does this have so few subs??" only to start encountering frequent grammar and spelling issues and think "ah, that's why".

[Pommie]

i try to push through grammar if its not like the worse, if the grammar and sentence structure is near unreadable then i'd be turned off, but if someones english isnt the best i can grin n bear it

[paracosmosfiction]

I honestly hate when my friends ask me to read their stuff. Not because I dislike supporting them. But most of the time (with one or two exceptions) they don't want an honest opinion. They want me to gush about how great it is. When I'd rather offer an honest opinion on the work to help them grow as a writer.

I had this one friend, I won't include names, but we're no longer close and it started with a review of his work. He had a lot of skeletons in his closet and had a hard time maturing after High School. But that's a separate issue. Long story short, he asked me to review his work and I found it atrocious. Not from a grammar perspective but from a moral perspective. Pointlessly subversive moral ambiguity thrown in purely for shock factor along with rape glorification and blatant misogyny. I was frankly disgusted and I relayed my feelings to him as nicely as possible. I told him upfront he needed to rethink it. All of it. I was polite, but I was honest.

We haven't really spoken since. I don't do that much reviewing of my friends work anymore for that very reason.

[foxnflames]

I can overlook a few typos and issues because we all make mistakes and don’t catch them all, but if they’re abundant, then it’s hard for me to focus on the plot if I have to stumble on sentences. (It’s hard enough to read sometimes anyway because I’m sure I have undiagnosed dyslexia)

Ironically enough, I dropped a book because, while the plot was interesting, the MC was insufferable. That particular book didn’t have a lot of grammatical issues and typos. I read two other books by the same author that were riddled with them and they had compelling characters and great plot.

I will also say that consistent errors (across several stories) irritate me more than a lot of typos.

[paracosmosfiction]

Same though! I am far more forgiving of bad grammar and bad punctuation than I am of bad characters. Even if it's not the MC, if they're irritating enough it can kill a book for me.

[rajillustration]

Oh I can't stand bad grammar. Like I'll allow a little bit--it's an online novel, after all--but if it's distracting and just consistently a problem, then I can't continue. It becomes difficult to immerse myself in the narrative.

[cherrystark]

Yes!!! I understand if you are writing in a different language that isn't your primary language(s), you might not get the grammar right. BUT!!! There are programs to check your grammar, native speakers online that will check your grammar, and so much more. I make assumptions about the author if I can't understand their work.

[DiegoPalacios]

Mostly, yes. The ocassional mistake is tolerable, not everyone is a native english speaker, but when it's too frequent i struggle more to keep reading it.

There are some exceptions, like deliberate bad grammar for the sake of comedy.

[CarltonIsaac]

Yes.

Typos or a few mistakes with tenses, punctuation and sentence structure is forgivable but can’t stand ‘you’re for your’ and vice versa, and ‘there for their’, ’ fool’s for the plural fools’.

Instant exit, even on forum posts, chat and IMs.

[rizamasuyama]

The occasional typo/grammar issue I tend to overlook because heck I do that myself even with editors looking over it. But if it's consistent I get frustrated and will drop the work. Even if I really like the idea. I feel there are plenty of resources that can help edit grammar/spelling for free so it's hard to get through stories/comics where it seems these things weren't checked for.

[darthmongoose]

I'll give people leeway to a fair extent in webcomics because I understand that my grammar isn't perfect and a lot of people are trying their best with English as a second language, but there are two scenarios where I might bail on a comic:

1. It's a professional work that earns significant money and has an editor attached and yet there's still bad grammar and misused vocabulary (I've actually seen at least a couple like this among premium Tapas comics, one of them is one of the biggest comics on the site and adapted from one of the biggest novels on the site, so presumably has been past editors on two separate occasions and manages to both preserve some mistakes from the original novel and add new ones!). In this case, it just shows a lack of effort and care. I at least try, to the best of my ability, with no editors, to make my comic easy to read, and if somebody literally has a qualified professional going over their work and I'm paying for it, there's really no excuse.

2. The grammar is just so bad that I either can't understand what's going on, or can't take it seriously. I'm trying to read what's meant to be a really dark scene and the villain looms menacingly with a wicked grin and says something like "your going too die when I put A knife thru you're heart!!!" and suddenly the whole thing is a comedy, because you're pulled out of the scene completely as you try to parse the words rather than just sort of absorbing them.

When you're making a literary work (and a comic certainly counts as a literary work), being able to write in the language you're creating it in is a core creative tool. It's also so much easier to become decent enough at English to come across as "fairly professional" than to get to that level in drawing, and it costs a lot less than getting fancy hardware and software, so it ought to be seen as the easiest way to add polish to comics and webnovels. Even as a native speaker, I'm planning to do a course or get some books to try to improve my English grammar, because it's so valuable to employers (even here in England) as well as a key skill for a creator to have.

[Leverance]

I've reviewed fanfics before, I've seen countless times amazing plot and characters but their grammar is absolutely horrid. Often the same mistakes over and again. All from wrong titles to words, comma mistakes, and typos all over the place. And sometimes the characters are written completely out of character.

Though, when given feedback, not all take it well.

Is one of the reasons I stop reading books like that, my time is valuable.

[Puck]

Yes, it´s part of the job as a writer to write in correct grammar.
I have stories and lyrics corrected/translated by someone who is better at english than me
because I´m a german. When you write a book you normally have an editor who checks
for grammar mistakes. Having bad grammar as a writer is like being an artist and never
learning perspective or anatomy. You can get through with it but it doesn´t look very pleasing

Off topic but about language:
I used to have a recording studio in berlin germany and I recorded a lot of italian
and spanish bands there. They tune their guitars and play well and work on the
rhythm of the band, then the singer records his vocals and you can only understand
every second word, things are directly translater from italian to english and don´t
make any sense or make you laugh because it sounds stupid. Really pissed me off
after a while. Why not sing in italian then? Why do you rehearse so much and don´t care
about the vocals?

[Azifri]

Unless the errors make it impossible to understand I usually don't care. Or maybe I should say, I passively ignore the errors and stick to the meaning of what is being said, which may come from growing up between two countries and with parents who don't have a common primary language

[gmaximin]

I’m really tolerant. And I’d rather read original content with poor grammar than perfectly done piece without any inspiring ideas...
But then again, I might be immune, the supermarket downstairs is selling “face” next to rice... so I basically live in poor English, and it can be really poetic (面 also means noodles... the beauty of awkward translations).

[siluscomics]

Absolutely yes. If I find it difficult to read then I wont read it, but it has to be quite bad!

[KhanSpring]

Hasn't happened to me yet.
Tapas hosts a lot of creators, to whom English is a second or third language, so I can't blame them for every grammar mistake.
English is not a first language for me either, so I don't mind people pointing out my mistakes.

[nauko]

Yes.

Usually when it occurs so much to the point I can no longer read it, the author's native language is not English. So it sucks when I decide to drop it for that, but I don't like my reading flow to be constantly interrupted by grammar, I can't really enjoy it.

[feuersichel]

In comics not that much as in novels. For Novels it's a no go as I myself am still learning english. For comics I tollerate it aslong as I can understand the situation through the art.

[Onsai]

It's unfortunate when a great story gets brought down because of grammar, but the same goes with the art. Comics and graphic novels need both to make a story work. When it comes to novels, well, if you are struggling with grammar but sill have a great story to tell, get someone to edit your stuff.

The words are just as important as the visuals, sometimes even more so. Same happens with video, you may be forgiving if a video doesn't have awesome visuals but if the sound is off, you just can't continue watching it.