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

[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.

[therosesword]

I've seen some writings where there's no quotations to seperate spoken dialogue from actions.

I just... Oh dear... Ummm... noooooooooooooo!

[therosesword]

I've gotten fairly tolerant, probably due to voice to text messages, but when it comes to someone trying to present serious work (and that encompasses comedy) it's a turn off.

The occasional goof such as spelling, or too many commas (or not enough) etc. I can shrug of. Grammar isn't my strong point anyway. But the things that make something impossible to read? Nope.

[Kelheor]

I've seen some writings where there's no quotations to seperate spoken dialogue from actions.

If it was written as:
- Hi! - he said to me. - How are you?

It's just a standart in some countries, like Russia =)

[itskidchameleon]

hmmm... I feel like I should say yes, but honestly there have been more than a few series with awful spelling/grammer that I ended up sticking with purely because there was something about them I just couldn't resist.

I'd say they were definitely exceptions though - if I wasn't super enthusiastic for whatever the coming was giving me, I'd probably lose interest.

[oliveoly]

As someone whose first language is not english, I find it hard to read things with "atrocious" grammar. I make mistakes myself, so if it is only a few mistakes here and there, I can read it... but using the wrong words just makes me very confused... I tend to assume it's a word or an idiom I do not know so I google it and it takes me out of the story...

[nostalgicroxas]

Grammar, yes. But when the words are their phonetic version... Oh my gosh does my head hurt. It stops me from reading comics on here, too. Like "he's" being written as "his". Just because the "i" makes an EEEEEE sound in some phonetic instances does not mean "his" and "he's" are interchangable words in English.

[MeltingCORE]

Aww, see I would hate to say this. Because yes, I've come across some stories with amazing concepts! But then the writing is just not well done. Whether that's grammar, sentence fragments, lack of descriptions, poor dialogue, no characterization, etc... And it is like a dilemma - because the concept could be awesome but the writing needs tons of work. With works like that, I give them a chance to improve and take critique if they say it's ok to give some. That's fair enough, I think.

[Moctemma]

Yes. All the time.
I can overlook many mistakes, except for these ones: Your/You're, To/Too, Then/That and Him/Her.
Your story must be outstanding for me to continue reading and make the effort to correct the author in case these mistakes happen a lot. But if the author makes the same mistakes again three chapters later after I'll correct them, it's a drop.
At the moment I have so many stories I want to read, I won't bother anymore and will stop reading if I find a mistake like that when it's clear is not a finger error.