yuletide_coal | The Dirty Energy Source

The Dirty Energy Source

Do you want to make a spreadsheet about spreadsheets?
Do you still need to figure out what two other fandoms you should request beside the only one you really want fic for?
Or are you trolling ALL the letter posts for placeholders, just so you can write those people some nice, dry coal?

We want to know all about it.

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I saw one letter with such terrible spelling and grammar that I already feel sorry for their recipient, unless said person gets a really good beta reader. Fortunately we don't share any fandoms, so I doubt that person will write for me.

Would you mind sharing a few of the fandoms?

ayrt I'm sorry, I don't remember. I only clicked on random letters to get a bit of an idea of how other people wrote their letters. I think it had some anime/manga fandoms, but I don't remember the names.

So basically ... ESL person doing Yuletide, so lets go point and laugh?

Why would you assume bad spelling and grammar = ESL?

Only esl people are allowed to like manga now??

Why would you assume that they were ESL? Also it's not like they linked to the person.

ayrt I'm not a native speaker of English either? Knowing spelling and grammar has nothing to do with whether it's your native language or not. Lots of native speaker write like five-year-olds. Lots of ESL speakers write excellent English. I just think it doesn't make a very good impression if your letter for a writing exchange makes it look like you can't write for shit.

I hope that wasn't my letter, b/c I requested a bunch of anime and manga fandoms and just posted last night. I admit I'm guilty of writing a lot of run on sentences and odd turns of phrase, but I've always tried to make sure my gifts are readable if not perfect.

ayrt It wasn't a case of run on sentences, more of people who can't be arsed to look up the difference between your and you're, its and it's and so on. And not just a little typo here and there, but a lot of things like that.

I've seen a few letters where people have typo'd a character name (do you look at your own letter at all before/after posting it?) And one where San Francisco is misspelled, in which case I wonder why their browser doesn't have spell check built in.

Yeah, there was one letter I really like (and still kind of desperately hope to get assigned to) that misspelled my favourite character's name. It's a common misspelling of that name and not a big deal, but I still kind of winced because, between the typo and the way she was only mentioned offhand in one parenthetical in the middle of an "any" request, it suggests that the letter writer probably really doesn't care about her all that much.

NA

I listen to audiobooks a lot, and I have to remember to go check spellings before I request. Last year (or maybe the year before?) I nominated Camicazi from How to Train Your Dragon as "Kamikaze", because that's what I thought I heard, and only realized it once signups were underway. I was too embarrassed to request it after that, lol.

And if it's a common misspelling, it could just be a brainfart.

Well, it was the kind of misspelling that changes the pronunciation of the character's name, which is what makes me think that the requester didn't care about the character. Think the Jaime-->Jamie mix-up that happens in Blue Beetle fandom all the time; it's the sort of thing you generally only mix up if you don't know how to pronounce Jaime. (Not that it's a big deal in the grand scheme of things if random Yuletide participant A doesn't care about my favourite character, it was just a bummer.)

Point definitely taken about the brainfart, though. And having tried to listen to an audiobook of Ancillary Justice, I know what you mean about having to remember to check spellings.

Oh, God, need to go check my letter now.

one year I completely got someone's name wrong in my letter despite having read the ridiculously long canon 5+ times and really liking that character. she probably just wrote her letter late at night.

Don't feel bad, in one of my fandoms, canon actually screws up the spelling of the character's name at one point. Further, at one point IMDB disagreed with official scripts on how to spell another character's name.

da

My brain has been trained to ignore spellcheck squiggles in fandom because so many fannish terms/names aren't in the dictionary and I can't be assed to add them all.

/coalie who checks her letter obsessively before and after posting it, however

Hee.❤

sa

Lesson learned: Do not try to meme on phone.

FWIW, I know more than a few ESL fans who might not get their letters intensively beta'd but will absolutely do so for their assignments, although I'd call their unbeta'd writing more 'confusing' than 'terrible'....

I imagine the same goes for native speakers who struggle with mechanics.

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The Dirty Energy Source

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