Chapter 10 - A Dummy's Guide to Grammar
Okay, so I tried to fit grammar on the last technicality page, but there was actually A LOT of subcategories I had to go through.
Due to that, I decided to make a chapter focusing solely on grammar, that way I can cover far more subjects and instances in which people normally made mistakes on.
Grammar (SB- to SB++)
When it comes to grammar, this could be the difference between Mao Zedong's 5-year-plan and a simple inconvenience. For example, in my story 'A God's Redemption', despite my proofreads, I have misused words such as 'bear' and 'bare.'
Thanks to 'Trougue' for pointing them out, now I can fix them instead of having everyone deal with it. Maybe I should put a 'sorry bad grammar' in the summary because that's what all the kids are doing these days.
Of course, if your own story has these issues, they could just be small mistakes that were missed during the proofreading session. When you have been working on something for a while, you tend to start missing things; sometimes what you need is a new perspective - A.K.A THE BETA READER. MYSTERIOUS PAST. FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. DEEP WEB.
Okay no; a beta can pick up small grammar mistakes on the first read better than you can on the 10th - simply because you begin to get used to certain errors before subconsciously skipping them. A good way to get through this, if you cannot find a beta, is to read your story out loud. Then, if something sounds weird, read it again carefully.
Defiantly and Definitely: See these two words? They are quite different right? Apparently not to certain fanfiction authors.
Defiantly: Showing open disobedience.
Definitely: Without doubt.
These two words are not close enough to actually typo. Although this is not story breaking, as the context of the sentence will allow the reader to figure out that the author actually meant to use definitely, it is still something that irks me to no end and repeated occurrences of this can actually make me drop a story.
Uzukaze's Dragon Sword by Ds Hero.
Here is an example excerpt from the story above. I will be posting it EXACTLY as it is:
'One
The hidden leaf village is all about bonds, but all that change at the 9-tail event. Some mask man has released it from it vessel, Kushina Uzumaki, the Red Dead. Her husband, Minato Namikaze, the Yellow Flash, is the 4th Hokage and had defeated mask man and sealed the 9-tail in their daughter, Naruko N.U. who has orange semi-spike hair and purple-green eyes. Then he uses the extra charka to save his wife. He then explains the village of what happen. They all celebrate of a new hero of the leaf, but the family has forgotten a member, a baby call Naruto Uzukaze, soon to be ex-firstborn son and twin brother, as well as the Maelstrom of Fairy Tail, and right now the whiskered blue-eyes, spiked-blonde and long red-head baby cries alone in the dark because he feels…no he knows that his childhood will be horrible.'
What? Just actually what? Reading this excerpt gave me multiple seizures and brain aneurysms. I don't think this is even the English language. I can't even begin to comment on the grammar because it is so disastrously fucked I don't think I can find out what it was even if I dived straight into Narnia. I feel like I'm trying to translate the Rosetta stone with a speak-&-spell dropped from the Empire State Building.
Anyone could read the above excerpt and come to the conclusion that this story needs to be rewritten, ASAP! Of course, some people might think the grammar shown in the excerpt above is PROPER grammar. Think about it, why would anyone PURPOSELY write a story with horrible grammar if they simply just didn't know better? I'm sure this author is struggling to improve his own grammar, or perhaps he just doesn't want to put in time and effort to rewrite them.
For the rest of the grammar section, I will be using this same passage to illustrate the proper use of the concepts in each section, similarly to how I did the dialogue section last chapter.
I assume most if not all of you had basic education in English - I understand there are people out there writing fanfiction while not being well versed in the language; this is why you get a Beta. However, if you ARE well versed in English, you should be paying more attention to story breaking grammar mistakes that could confuse your readers.
Below definitions taken from ef .com.
Punctuation: Punctuation is a standardized set of rules that should dictate how your sentences are structured. The placement of punctuation could potentially change the entire meaning of the sentence; even a simple mistake could completely butcher your sentence and frustrate the reader.
The Period: The period is used for many things; the most common usage however, is that it marks the end of a sentence that is not a question or an exclamation. Of course, most if not all of you know this rule; any errors regarding not putting a period is usually because of negligence.
A period can also indicate an abbreviation, for things such as: Dr., Mr., Mrs., and Ms. Of course, in UK English, a period is not required for this type of abbreviation. This is why etc. needs a period; it is an abbreviation for etcetera.
Three dots can be used to make an ellipsis. This formally indicates that only a part of a sentence or a text is used in a quote or is being left to the read to complete a thought. I personally use it to signify long pauses in the same dialogue in place of a comma.
Periods can be used after a single word, in which that word is normally a greeting or a command.
Ex. "Go."
Periods are also used as a placeholder in numbers, such as the period in $1.50.
The Comma: The comma is probably the most useful tool when it comes to building your sentence. It is used to separate phrases, words, or clauses in lists.
Ex. If you do this, this, that, and this.
Remember if you are only listing two things, there is no need for a comma before the and.
The listing could be a series of independent clauses (a separate idea in a sentence), nouns, adjectives, verbs, or phrases.
Using commas in clauses is probably the most difficult; beginner authors might find it confusing as to where exactly to put the comma. While certain comma placements are NOT story breaking, it is still important to use them, but not to the point where it replaces a period and creates a run-on sentence.
Independent clauses, ex. after I voted for Kanye West, I decided to go to the store for some bleach to kill myself, only to find out that the store is closed.
Now, you can easily see that if I were to remove the first comma in the above example, the lack of separation in the clauses would sound weird.
'After I voted for Kanye West I decided to go to the store for some bleach to kill myself.'
This is actually the definition of a run-on sentence; two or more clauses joined together without proper punctuation or conjunction.
Words such as after, when, or even though, are words you would use to begin a sentence with multiple clauses. After the first, a comma MUST be used.
In terms of the second comma, the sentence can still work without it, although, it is still better to have it.
Here are some examples of using commas for nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
Ex. I went to the store to grab a pickle, lube, condoms, and some chocolate.
Ex. Natsu was eager, excited, and pumped for his battle.
Ex. Natsu punched, kicked, and ass-blasted Erigor straight to the moon.
The next part of commas are used, is to separate a series of phrases.
Ex. The Ice Dragon Slayer revealed his past, crush-blushed every single girl, defeated Gildarts, and then one-shotted Acnologia.
After listing or separating a series of whatever, a comma is also used to enclose details that authors would often put in brackets.
Ex. Natsu, the son of Igneel, was anxious to join the S-class exam.
Notice how I used a comma to say 'the son of Igneel?' Within the two commas, I can add whatever detail or comment that is non-essential. This sentence can simply be replaced with 'The son of Igneel was anxious to join the S-class exam,' which removed the need for commas. However, this method can be used to introduce more sentence variety.
Here is one that most of you know how to do already: the participial phrases! For those of you who do not know what a participle is, it is a verbal form, such as burning, burned, or burnt, used as an adjective, which is often used to describe the state of a noun.
Ex. A burning log.
Now, a participial phrase is a sentence beginning with a participle that modifies the subject in the sentence. Most if not all of you do this in your own stories, even if you don't know what it's called!
Ex. Voting for Trump, I felt a great regret as I could not put my ballot for Harambe.
Ex. Looking towards the East, I walked towards my definition.
Instead of saying 'I walked towards my definition while looking towards the east,' the above example can be used as it offers more sentence variety while having the same meaning.
A Common Mistake for people that use participial phrases are the dreaded DANGLING PARTICIPLES. For the most part, most people don't really know they are using a dangling participle, as to the author, the meaning of the sentence is pretty well understood. However, to the readers, they might get confused because a dangling participle modifies the wrong subject.
Ex. Punching his hardest, the sandbag buckled under the force.
Let us assume that it was Natsu wishing he was stronger; if you were to look at the sentence, the 'punching' part is modifying the sandbag! Now, we know that the sandbag can't really punch because it is an inanimate object! However, due to the dangling participle, the sentence makes it seem that way!
To fix this error, you have to reverse the placement of subjects in the second clause.
Ex. Punching his hardest, Natsu felt the sandbag buckle under the force.
The Exclamation Mark: The purpose of the '!' is actually pretty simple to understand. Most if not all authors understand its usage. However, for those of you who do not know, the '!' is used to express astonishment, surprise, excitement, or to emphasize a comment in a short, sharp phase.
Ex. Help! He's coming for me!
In the example, I'm using the '!' to express the subject's fear and anxiousness.
The Question Mark: A relatively simple tool to use. The question mark is used to end any and all direct questions.
Ex. What is your name?
Now, something that might confuse you, is the usage of question marks in a dialogue not at the end of a sentence.
Ex. "Why did you come?" Natsu asked.
In this case, a question mark AND an exclamation mark can be seen the same as a comma in terms of what follows after. The question or exclamation mark within the dialogue does not signify the end of the sentence.
The Colon: A colon is used to expand on the sentence preceding it, often introducing a list elaborating whatever was previously stated.
Ex. Natsu had three things for dinner: fire, fire, and some more fire.
In regards to the '?', '!', and ':', all three types of punctuation are relatively to understand. Just make sure to follow the set standards and not to add unnecessary transitions or modifiers.
The Semicolon: Unlike a period of a comma, a semicolon rests somewhere in-between. It can be used to join phrases and clauses that are linked by theme without using a conjunction.
Ex. Harems are trash; they are unrealistic.
The semicolon in this sentence is replacing ',because.'
The other usage for a semicolon is when objects in a list have enclosed details already using commas. This is to avoid confusion as to where the individual objects actually are in a list.
Ex. Many of the Fairy Tail Mages: Natsu, the son of Igneel; Gray, the ice devil slayer; Erza, the Titania, were all excited for the upcoming Grand Magic Games.
The Hyphen: For the most part, hyphens are used to join two words or parts of words together. This is to avoid confusion or ambiguity in the meaning when the words are done without a hyphen. These are known as compound words.
Ex. Year-old.
Ex. Son-in-law.
There are MANY different situations where you might use a compound word. I won't list them here but if you are unsure whether or not to use them, just look it up on google.
Another usage of the hyphen is when it is being used as dashes. They are used to add parenthetical statements in the same way you would use brackets.
Ex. 99.9% of fanfiction readers think Minipa is an edgy cunt - he is.
Now, the usage of parenthesis is the same way; the parts after the dash can simply be enclosed in them for the same effect.
Ex. 99.9% of fanfiction readers think Minipa is an edgy cunt (he is).
Now that we finished a basic tutorial for punctuation and its subcategories, I will be fixing all the punctuation errors in the original excerpt.
'One
The hidden leaf village is all about bonds, but all that change at the 9-tail event. Some mask man has released it from it vessel, Kushina Uzumaki, the Red Dead. Her husband, Minato Namikaze, the Yellow Flash, is the 4th Hokage and had defeated the mask man and sealed the 9-tail in their daughter, Naruko N.U., who has orange semi-spike hair and purple-green eyes. Then, he uses the extra charka to save his wife. He then explains the village of what happen. They all celebrate of a new hero of the leaf, but the family has forgotten a member, a baby call Naruto Uzukaze, soon to be ex-firstborn son and twin brother, as well as the Maelstrom of Fairy Tail; right now, the whiskered blue-eyes, spiked-blonde and long red-head baby cries alone in the dark because he feels…no, he knows, that his childhood will be horrible.'
I didn't do anything to the 'One' because the author was using it as a line break. For those of you that do this, please use the line break function as it is simply cleaner than XXXXXXXXNARUTOXXXXXXXX, or something of the sort. I sometimes use an ellipsis as a line break if there are too many scene changes; this is so I do not spam line breaks to the point where it looks messy.
Now, reading that passage, despite all the missing words and wrong tenses, the punctuation was actually pretty good! Most of the enclosed information were done properly; I only have to change six things!
The first change was right after 'Naruko N.U.' If you read the phrase after that carefully, you will realize that, the entire portion can be considered the same as enclosed information. Of course, it is the end of the sentence; however, a comma should still be right there at the beginning.
The second change, is on the sentence right after. I put the comma before then because in this case, it is used similarly to 'however.' When doing this, it is grammatically correct to put a comma after the word 'then' to separate the clause.
The third change is after 'right now.' The reason for this is similar to the second change.
The fourth change is more of my own preference; I took out the comma and 'and' to replace it with a semicolon.
The fifth and sixth change are due to the tone of the sentence. In the final phrase, after the ellipsis, I put a comma after 'no' because the author was using it in a way to correct a previous statement. The comma after 'knows' is there as that is the corrected statement. If I were to remove the last comma, and simply left it as 'he knows that his childhood will be horrible,' then it wouldn't have the same tone of voice that the author is trying to achieve.
Of course once we move on to the next aspects of grammar, we will continue to build on this excerpt, until it is completely grammatically correct.
Verb Tenses
Verb tenses are rather tricky in writing, as there are well over twenty different types of them.
I won't be going every single one of them; instead, I will be modifying the excerpt in a step-by-step case study.
Before I continue, some of you might be wondering, isn't the tenses in these discussions inconsistent? While it might have been easier to simply stick with past or present, some of my direct instructions to you, the reader, might have actually sounded awkward had that been the case.
As you can see, my past paragraph were all done with past tense. This is because the paragraph is more of a story-telling paragraph as opposed to pure instruction.
Here is an example of what that might have sounded like.
Ex. Make sure you did this.
See how weird that sounds? If I was giving you instructions on a certain technique, it would simply be better if I wrote it as: make sure you do this.
'One
The hidden leaf village is all about bonds, but all that changed at the 9-tail event. Some masked man had released it from its vessel, Kushina Uzumaki, the Red Dead. Her husband, Minato Namikaze, the Yellow Flash, was the 4th Hokage and had defeated the masked man and sealed the 9-tails in their daughter, Naruko N.U., who had orange semi-spiked hair and purple-green eyes. Then, he used the extra charka to save his wife. He then explained the village of what happened. They all celebrated of a new hero of the leaf, but the family has forgotten a member, a baby called Naruto Uzukaze, soon to be ex-firstborn son and twin brother, as well as the Maelstrom of Fairy Tail; right now, the whiskered blue-eyes, spiked-blonde and long red-headed baby cried alone in the dark because he felt…no, he knew, that his childhood would be horrible.'
Okay, there are a lot of errors; if there is a repeated error, then I won't explain it.
The first change is on the word 'change.' In a story telling scenario like this one, past tense should be used for all your verbs, unless you have a past participle, etc. I added a 'd' after the word to make it correct.
The second change is similar; however, it is different enough to warrant an explanation. The sentence itself used 'mask man.' Without the 'ed' at the end, it makes it seem that the sentence is referring to some sort of mask salesman, as opposed to a man wearing a mask.
The third, fifth, seventh, change is simply wrong tense.
Fourth change added an 's' to make 'it' into its possessive form.
Sixth and eighth change is the same as the second.
Ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth change is all wrong tense.
Jesus Christ, if one of you wrote something where 80% of all the verbs are in the wrong tense, you should consider paying more attention in English class.
Fourteenth change is the same as the second.
Fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth are all wrong tenses.
What does this mean? You might be wondering, when should I use present, and when should I use past? To keep it simple, if you are storytelling, always use the past tense when referring to verbs. It is easy to accidentally skip over a wrong tense in the proof reading session; that is why you get a beta to catch any mistakes you might have missed!
Now we have went through the common problems, I will now continue to change the excerpt until it has become how I would write it. However, I am omitting stylistic preferences for this particular draft.
'One
The hidden leaf village is all about bonds; however, all that changed at the 9-tails event. Some masked man had released the demon from its vessel, Kushina Uzumaki, the Red Dead. Her husband, Minato Namikaze, the Yellow Flash, was the 4th Hokage and had defeated the masked man, then sealing the 9-tails in their daughter, Naruko N.U., who had orange semi-spiked hair and purple-green eyes. Then, he used the extra chakra to save his wife. He then explained to the village on what happened. They all celebrated a new hero of the leaf, but the family has forgotten a member, a baby named Naruto Uzukaze, soon to be ex-firstborn son and twin brother, as well as the Maelstrom of Fairy Tail; right now, the whiskered blue-eyed, spiked-blonde and long red-headed baby cried alone in the dark because he felt…no, he knew, that his childhood would be horrible.'
The first change is because the second phrase contradicted the first. In instances like this one, I would use however, preceded by a semicolon.
The second change is simply the wrong label; the Nine-Tailed Fox is also called the Nine-Tails. If you are using '9-tails event' to describe its attack on Konoha, then it should be the correct label.
The third change is because of the ambiguity of the subject. Now, some of you might realize that it was referring to the Nine-Tailed Fox as an individual. However, the previous mention of it is the Nine-Tailed Fox's ATTACK, which could actually confuse the subject in question.
The fourth change is simply a misspelling of 'chakra.'
The fifth, sixth and seventh change are wrong and missing words.
The eighth change, although TECHNICALLY correct, it is better to used 'named' as 'called' is generally used to refer to places or landmarks.
The final change is the same as the 'masked man' change. I did not put it in the previous part because it is slightly different. The original compound word was 'blue-eyes;' however, this does not actually work for the sentence. Blue-eyes is just eyes that are blue, while blue-eyed, is used when someone HAS blue eyes.
Now that we got all the standard shit out of the way, I will now change the excerpt to how I would write it.
Here's a little challenge for all of you reading the grammar chapter: leave a review of all the changes you spot from the previous version of the excerpt, to the one I am about to show you.
'One
The hidden leaf village, Konoha, is all about bonds; however, all of that changed when the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked. A man in a mask had released the demon from its vessel, Kushina Uzumaki, the Red Dead. Her husband, Minato Namikaze, the Yellow Flash, was the 4th Hokage. He had defeated, with great effort, the masked man. The blonde shinobi then sealed the Nine-Tails in their daughter, Naruko Namikaze Uzumaki, who had slightly spiky orange hair and violet eyes. Then, he used his remaining chakra to save his wife.
After, he explained to the village on what happened. Hearing the news, they all celebrated a new hero of the leaf, but the family has forgotten a member, a baby named Naruto Uzukaze, soon to be ex-firstborn son, ex-twin-brother, and Maelstrom of Fairy Tail; right now, the baby, who had a combination of blonde and red hair, blue eyes, and whisker-like birthmarks, cried alone in the dark because he felt…no, he knew, that his childhood would be horrible.'
Now, the finished product might be GRAMMATICALLY correct; it is still FAR from perfect. Soon, we will discuss world building and story building!
Conclusion: Grammar is responsible for the structure of your story. If you misuse it, you can easily end up changing the meaning of each sentence. If this is something you struggle with, please read through the chapters and the examples to make sure you understand each concept.
If you need someone to check on your work, ask a beta! Some mistakes might simply be not understanding; however, many are simply just proofreading misses.
Theme: Learn the basics before writing, ask for help! Remember, mistakes are for learning, not self-pity!
For those of you that want to learn about more aspects of grammar, check out !
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Chapter 10 Done! Next Chapter: Fairy Tail Tropes
Make sure you guys check out my other stories!
Read my profile and join my Trope discussion forums!
[ROTLB: The Birth of the Light Bringer]
[ROTLB: Light of Fairies]
[Chef Ramsay]
[A God's Redemption]
[The Nothing Dragon Slayer's Misadventures in Fairy Tail]
Minipa, out!