Um... hello, people. Finally swallowed the embarrassment of it all and put something up. The name's a combination of pseudonym and anonymous, geddit? Ahem. Anyway, I'm a complete spelling and grammar pedant, which is a shame, but can't be helped as I'm an English graduate. This is also part of the reason why I have to remain nameless - if any of my former tutors got wind of me doing this I'd be mincemeat.

Some Brief Notes on the English Language

Right - please don't construe this as hostile, anyone, but it seems that the standard of language in a lot of entries on this site leaves something to be desired. Now, I don't claim to be infallible myself by any means - everyone makes mistakes. However, a lot of the errors that I have come across seem to be based on a lack of understanding of basic linguistic rules, and are being repeated in such a way that suggests that their authors are not aware of their mistakes. This might seem amazingly patronizing, but I have decided to put up a few sentences that outline common errors.

'She'd never seen anything more beautiful then that in her life.'

This sentence makes no sense, but illustrates an error that seems to be becoming more common. The correct phrase is 'more beautiful than' ; I can only assume that people are writing phonetically.

'The book's you're given at school are educational.'

Arrrrgh! A classic case of what, in Britain, we call the 'greengrocer's apostrophe'. This term came about because an awful lot of greengrocers seem to include this classic error in their advertising. An apostrophe does not appear when a noun (eg. book) goes from singular to plural (eg. books). Thus the correct sentence formation here would be 'the books you're given at school are educational.'

'Your so lovely; you're green eyes are so pretty.'

Once again, aaaaargh! One of the most consistent errors one finds, and yet one of the most simple rules to grasp. The confusion of you're, your and yours by some authors seems to be the result of a lack of understanding about homophones - that is, words that sound the same but mean different things, and are sometimes spelt differently. Let's look at them individually:

'Your' is a possessive pronoun - that is, it is a word that indicates that someone or something belongs to another. It is not a contraction, and thus needs no apostrophe. This is not the case, however, with

'You're' - this word is not actually a single word, but a contraction; that is, it is a shortened form of the phrase 'you are', the missing 'a' being replaced by an apostrophe. These two forms are commonly confused, but once you learn these simple rules, there is no need to do so.

'Your's' - this formation is never correct, and so if you find yourself writing this, you know it's wrong. This is another example of the 'greengrocer's apostrophe', with people including an unnecessary apostrophe when they create a plural. That's just reminded me about 'its' and it's'...

'Its not mine, miss!'

This sentence is incorrect, as the use here is as a contraction of 'it is'. There needs to be an apostrophe, therefore, to replace the missing 'i', eg. 'It's not mine, miss!'

'The cat was dirty; it's fur was all covered with mud.'

Here, we are using 'it' to indicate possession, ie. the fact that the fur belongs to the cat. It is therefore not a contraction, and in this context, never contains an apostrophe. The correct formation is thus 'its fur was all covered with mud'.

Right - these are just some of the most common mistakes, but some of the most easily rectified. Please don't look on this as bitchiness on my part; I just think that it's a shame that some otherwise good writing is marred by silly linguistic errors. Obvious spelling mistakes never look good, either, so if there's anything you're unsure about, consult a dictionary. If someone reads your fic and it is well-written in terms of its basic language, the chances are that they will be more likely to like it. That's not to say that creativity and originality are not of primary importance. It's just that I know that if I find these silly mistakes in a fic, it seems to let it down automatically. If anyone's actually bothered to read this and thinks it applies to them, I do hope it's been of use.