.....OK, you were warned and you're still here reading. That's a good sign!

NOW, the LAST thing I want to do is to discourage anyone from writing a story and posting it to EA. We've gone over what's acceptable and what's not, but there are a few more things I'm going to say here. These have mainly to do with poor grammar and spelling and illiteracy in general. NO, this is not a slam on non-English as a 1st language people.

My advice there is to write it in your native tongue, as grammatically perfect as possible, and use a translation program. I'll take it from there. HOWEVER .....

Before you even open up WORD or COREL or Notepad or whatever the heck you use, read this! (http://www.eunuch.org/format.htm) and/or click this : http://www.eunuch.org/format.htm , same thing. Master Waddie took a lot of time and effort to figure this out, and yes, to some extent, eye appeal does matter in text. You don't have to do ALL of that, but please read it, at least.

I have received email from several readers, and I find myself in agreement with MOST of them. Stories that are grammatically hard to follow, and just plain hard to read may take hits, but they don't get read. Likewise, stories that are one huge chunk of text with no paragraph breaks are hard to read as well. As the formatting guideline states, every time you hit ENTER, you get a paragraph break. The same can be said for double-spaced stories where ENTER was hit at the end of each line, or in mid-sentence.

On a computer, you dont' have to hit RETURN or ENTER like you do on a typewriter! The program will wrap the text for you. It seems to be one extreme or the other - hugely spaced lines in double or triple spaces from the ENTER key, or solid blocks of text. This is annoying, and most readers won't finish the story.

Also, I am going to say it again - spelling. If you don't have a spell-checking program, get one. If you have it, USE it! If you can't get one, email me. Type it up and send me your name and email address to post with, and I will check it for you. Paste the text into the email body - do NOT attach the .doc or .wpd file or whatever it is. I don't open attachments. I will post it for you, allow 2 or 3 days for shipping and handling .... thank you very much!

Next comes readability in general, to say nothing of being on-topic. Now comes the ugly part, so hold on tight .....

..... Stories that make no sense at all, whether they involve a castration or not, will be trashed from the tank. Stories that are off-topic will be trashed. Anything that is hard to read and loses me in the first paragraph, or ones that I have to read twice to figure it all out, will be trashed. By loosing me, or being hard to read, I mean this - grammar and spelling that are so bad that I stumble over it and have to keep re-reading. It's no fun trying to decipher text. That's why I quit teaching!

Oh, and for the record, four or five run-on sentences do not make a story. Punctuation counts, too.

Now, a typo here or there or a left out word is fine. We ALL do that from time to time. No matter how much you proof your own stuff, errors still slip in. This is fine, but when almost every damn word in a sentence is spelled wrong, it's impossible to read!

Thiss is fin, but whene amlost eveyr wort in a sentennce is spilled wrang, its imposibal to red.

See what I mean? And yes, I do get submissions like this.

SO, now you know - if you submit something and it's not out in 12 hours, it went into the trash. I'm sorry, but this is how it is. We simply cannot take the time to repair every story that comes in when it is in bad shape.

I think all this sounds fair to me. And I agree with and support this ruling in full.

the first story I wrote did not have papraghaph spaces in them, but i have seen the light. I am in agreement that the story should be fun to read, and be easy to understand. Dont leave things up in the air. If a guy is tied down to a table explain how he got there. I hope that we each take time to put the best product on the Archive.

Ok, I'm guilty.....I did a story on a Yahoo site and it ended up

six feet wide and only one inch tall. So I got in the habit of

hitting enter as I got near the end of a line. I come from the

teletype school (carrage return) (line feed) (letters)

I've been wondering for a long time when someone on your staff would compose such a bang-on rant. You're a treasure. Keep up the good work, and rest assured that there are a lot of us out here who appreciate your efforts. We surely do.

Paolo,

I heartily agree with your sentiment but being the disruptive soul that I am, I cannot help poking a bit of fun at spell checkers. I know that this has been posted before, but for those who have never seen it:

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

LOL

SIGH.....

Yes, I know that spell checkers are not perfect, but they do catch a lot of errors. They certainly can't HURT!

On the serious side, though, it DOES bother me to find something in the tank that someone obviously took a lot of time to write and post - and then find that the story is totally incomprehensible or is just a mess. You know, someone tried, at least, and then I wind up having to trash it. That's gotta hurt, but it can't be helped - most times.

Also, thanks for the words of support. I noticed that NOTHING was submitted today ... ouch.

Paolo,

Joking aside, I must admit that if I find the first couple paragraphs of a story hard to read I do not bother to continue.

I do not envy you in your task of reviewing all of the items. Considering some of the poor ones which do get on to the archive, I can only wonder at the awfulness of the ones which you do reject.

So, thank you for saving us from it.

LOl

Poor Paolo is going to shit when he sees it. There is currently a story in the holding tank that has one misspelled word in it, but the title is misspelled.

talula wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2002 10:30 am Poor Paolo is going to shit when he sees it. There is currently a story in the holding tank that has one misspelled word in it, but the title is misspelled.

Of course, in science fiction circles, we are all aware of the "slush pile", those stories submitted to magazines from so many pooor writers. John W. Campbell used to say that he had read more SF stories not worth reading since, as editor of Astounding/Analog he felt an obligation to read every slush pile submission.