This may or may not be beneficial to you as some people never falter in their 'Never judge a book by its cover' style of browsing, but there are some times when one simply must draw the line. I promise, I'll TRY and keep an open mind…

A/N: All comments are strictly speculative and do not apply to EVERY story or person out there. Stop e-mailing me.

Part Two:

Titles and Summaries

1. The Title

Almost every story has a title, and this short but very important part can make or break a published work. Now, really think about this: If you were browsing through a bookshelf and you were only looking at the title, would you pick up 'The Yellow Puppy Named Frank' or 'Frank, Yellow Warrior Canine of the South'? The more exciting and advanced-sounding title, right? All the same with a Fan Fiction- would you rather read 'Draco's Love Potion' or 'A Drop of Love in My Pumpkin Juice'? (To tell you the truth, I might not read either, but uh…)

But there aren't just boring titles. There are also careless titles (in which you will probably find a careless story). These titles are full of typos, misspellings, AIM lingo, and grammatical errors (i.e. 'The Plastik Serjun' or 'With Luv, Hermy'). If an author has not the patience to simply go back and fix their own title to make it look at least a bit more professional, they probably haven't done so with their stories, either.

2. The Summary

A good summary consists of a short general overview of the plot of the enclosed story, the pairings, and any warnings that may offend someone. I'm not saying every person who isn't offended by (Fem)Slash, MPreg, or Character Death is offending at all, but there are some people who would like to know what they are about to read and have the option to choose whether or not to read the story (like me).

Here are a few 'cheats' into the abbreviations that are usually (and probably should be) included in many summaries-

1) Slash- Male and male romance (Can also use names separated by '/' or 'x', such as 'Harry/Hermione', 'RxH', 'DMHP', etc.)(These can be used for any kind of pairing, same sex or not)

2) FemSlash- Female and female romance (see above)

3) MPreg- Male pregnancy (Almost always a strange and twisted story line, but whatever you like…)

4) Character Death- Self explanatory (Seen in many angsty fics)

5) AU- Alter Universe (Usually completely different story line from the book, movie, or show, with the same characters, such as Harry Potter not being a wizard)

6) OC- Own Character (Seen a lot with Mary-Sue fics, butsometimes they're actually original)

7) OOC- Out of Character (The characters in the stories do not act how they normally do)

8) POV- Point of View (Can be a certain character's point of view instead of third-person)

9) 'Mush' or 'Fluff'- Sappy, romantic stories

10) Citrus- Lots and lots of overly-detailed SEX. (Usually poorly written, I've noticed)

11) OneShot or 'OS'- A one-chapter story (may begin to be used less and less as you can now add 'Complete' to the bottom of your summary)

12) R&R- Usually posted either out of habit or desperation, this simply means 'Read and Review'…meaning their story.

13) Post(Insert book/movie/show here)- A Fic set after the original story took place

14) Pre(Insert book.movie/show here)- A Fic set before the original story took place

(If you think of more that I didn't originally post, please tell me in a review! Thank you!)

A bad summary (oh, here we go…) consists of the following:

-Bad spelling

-Bad grammar

-The use of 'LOL' or 'J/K' or 'OMG'…your basic Internet lingo (I'm sorry, this is just tacky)

-The use of 'bad words' (There are younger children on this site that do not need to be exposed to such language)

-Failing to give some sort of warning for any of the firstten or last two of the above abbreviations (It's common courtesy)

-Detailing how terrible you are at summaries and to 'just read the story' (this is demanding, a bit rude, and says nothing about your story, as well as implies that the story within might 'suck' just as badly)

The next installment's coming up soon, Skimming. Feel the anticipation swarming inside your mind...

-Kyle, the SFG