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

[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.

[elpenor]

the reason we have recognizable grammar guides in English (they're decentralized but recognizable) is because, in storytelling, grammar is necessary for ease of reading, which contributes to immersion. in business writing, following an established grammar style shows that the writer is serious. those are, however, the only two reasons "correct" grammar is necessary. in casual communication - including forums, IRC, and message boards - 100% accurate grammar conveys a tone that isn't always appropriate

If someone speaks like this in a casual environment, complete with terminal punctuation, I assume that they're either very old or take themselves far too seriously to be any fun.

so in circumstances like these, we eschew capitals and terminal punctuation in order to get across the feeling of casual conversation. however, other parts of grammar are necessary - for example, you can't expect people to instantly understand a run-on sentence, so you should avoid making them or risk upsetting the pacing of the conversation. people who don't understand this (and grammatical prescriptivists who shoot down "bad" grammar when the communication is otherwise clear) are genuinely not worth talking to because they do not comprehend what language is for

but, yes, in a story, absolutely get some prereaders and editors if your story is serious 'cause of the immersion thing I mentioned

[AnonymousHouseCat]

Honestly, if it was just an informal thing I wouldn’t mind the grammar and spelling as long as it was still basically understandable. If it were a more formal published thing it might bug me a bit, but I’d still read it if the story was good.

[Pan]

Bad grammar will 100% stop my reading in its tracks. Really good writing is when you aren't consciously aware you're reading a book, and lots of grammar errors do a very good job of reminding one they're reading. If something isn't published professionally I'm totally cool with the occasional mistake (lord knows I have typos, too lol) but a ton scares me haha

[ble]

Nah, but i bet i am the one that turned people off lol. Even using some online translator, is not a guarantee it won't suck.

[indagold]

I have never read a story that was that level of incomprehensible outside of english being someone's second language. At that point you need to get a translator if everything else is amazing cause that can break it.

[paracosmosfiction]

I'm familiar with that standard. Unfortunately, it was not that standard. It was just pure chaos.

[linaket]

I'm one of those ones that are 100% turned off by bad grammar. I could care less about any of the other things, if you can't communicate the story, then the story isn't any good. On the reverse, though, I've also read things that don't necessarily appeal to me personally (the world, story, or tropes) because the writing is good.

This is obviously less of a problem I think for comics, as there is the visual element that helps translate things, but for novels I will yeet without looking back if I don't like the writing style.

[oshirockingham]

Depends on the level of it.
If I can't tolerate it, then it's probably very messed up because English is my 4th language to be fair.

[beta1042]

I think it depends on how bad the grammar is. If it's things like forgetting periods at the end of speech balloons, doing 2 dot or 4 dot ellipses, rare occasional typos, some extra commas, I won't care. As long as I can follow the story and it reads at least as well as most people converse, I am fine. However, if I am finding myself rereading lines because I can't follow, and this happens a lot, I just drop it.

[kmlangleyauthor]

It sounds like most people here have a line they just can’t cross - and I agree with that. I’m not entirely sure where the line is (that’s a lie, I just remembered something I read once ) but it was so much more than just the grammar. And I think that’s generally true for me. If the story is interesting, I’ll stick through the bad grammar (although I might have to be in a specific mood to read it). But if the grammar is bad on top bad formatting, bad characters, and unintelligible storylines, then I’m out

[eloise]

OMG your "your going too die when I put A knife thru you're heart!!!" really made me laugh a lot

[GoldenHoneydew]

yes, I try to be flexible but as someone who didn't really read novels on tapas until i got wattpad I was exposed to some TERRIBLE grammar and it's really painful to read when you know that it's a really young child writing too. Once read a story on wattpad that started with a 6 year old girl stabbing her dad to death with a butcher knife because "she didn't know what a knife was" and within the same sentence it lapsed ten years and the 15 year old girl was being abused by her mom. This all happened in less then 4 sentences and the writing was like this: she was five when it happpened, she saw knife- she took, father? dead.

[ignika1998]

Absolutely, especially if it's in the first chapter. Any grammatical error or typo in the first chapter is an instant drop for me. If the author couldn't put in the effort to proofread the first thing their readers will see, why should I put in the effort to read it at all?

Other than that, I can excuse the occasional typo or grammatical error every once in a while. It's not that big of a deal. Hell, even professional level productions make these mistakes sometimes.

But if it's to the point where lines don't make sense and it's a pain just to follow what's going on, then I won't bother. I understand that a lot of the people who write these kinds of things are ESL. But again, if they aren't bothered to learn the language they're writing in, why should I be bothered to decipher what they tried to write?

IMO they'd be better off writing in their mother tongue. There's nothing wrong with writing something in a language other than English.

[milejdyvan]

Although I agree that a person should learn a language that they are writing in (me being one of those people), I have to just slightly disagree on your line of thought at the end. It's not so simple as to just "write in your mother tongue". It's highly likely that there isn't an audience for their mother tongue on the internet. Heck I don't think there IS an option on Tapas to write in a different language. This would definitely be my case, and also, writing in my language is much harder grammatically than English. This isn't even mentioning the social differences. What if, for example, someone wants to write an LGBTQ story but their country of origin isn't accepting of that? There are a lot of reasons why people want to write in English and it's not simply to do cuz why not.

That's all I wanted to say not trying to argue or anything but wanted to get that out there, since I feel like many times foreigners don't really get the rep that they deserve.

Oh and as an after thought, I have seen atrocious level of grammar from native English speakers too. I would say even more. These people probably never paid attention in school and simply write what they hear. At least with foreigners, there is a much higher chance that they had to learn the grammar first.

[domisotto]

I haven’t written anything in my native tongue for over 20 years. I would actually do worse in my native language as far as the writing is concerned than in English, because I write in English daily.

And, yes, the audience is not there either.

Plus, a lot of people who are reading, are not native speakers either, so it balances out.