Biggest Wattpad Pet Peeves

Who Needs Spammar?

Oh. My. Gosh! This one drives me absolutely insane!! Why do some authors think that they can write a story without using good grammar or spelling? What are they teaching in school nowadays?

Just a warning: this will probably be my longest and most rant-like entry.

Another thing. For those of you who don't know, since apparently this isn't common knowledge, spelling + grammar = spammar.

First things first - spelling. Um, hello? First of all, if you're on a computer, there's a spellcheck right there! How hard is it to press that one little button and make your story 100x better? Answer: not hard at all. And if you're on a device like an iPod (like yours truly), there's a nifty thing called autocorrect. Yes, sometimes it screws your sentences up more than before. But there's a thing you can do called fixing it. Not too hard. And honestly, who wants to read a story like this:

Bob walked to hte park wiht his dog. He smled at his dgo afectionatly. Bbo lpves plsying with his dog. Whever he asgohoa he aswia ouasgh and oawhgaglaf owjfharg asogag ghsjgh.

Do you see my point? Who wants to read a story where every other word is unintelligible, or the main character is Bob half the time and Bbo the other half? Okay, maybe this was a bit exaggerated, but seriously. Spelling is important! (I may be a bit biased because I used to do spelling bees - but that only makes me more knowledgeable on the topic, right?)

And if the only words intelligible (not even!) are kindergarten-level words, you are a kindergarten-level writer and the only readers you will attract are kindergarten-level readers. Namely, kindergarteners. And quite frankly, I haven't seen that many of them on Wattpad. Just saying. So good luck getting readers.

Keep in mind, this is not talking about the excellent writers who may accidentally misspell a word or forget to correct a typo. No, I'm tallking about those lazy people who can't be bothered and have more non-existent words than real words in their story.

Now that I've covered spelling, class, let's move on to the grammar lesson. Again, this is not about people who have one or two minor errors. This is about the people whose whole story is a grammatical error.

1) Punctuation. I know what you may be thinking: "Oh, no one will care if I leave out this one little comma. They'll still understand my sentence, and it will save me a fraction of a second. And maybe I'll just leave out this quotation mark, too. Look at that, I saved a whole second of my time!" But my friends, let me tell you, it's a slippery slope. Pretty soon your writing will look like this:

Bob saw her for the first time at the school dance She looked at him with that dazzling smile throwing a wink in his direction He approached her nervously and cleared his throat His heart was pounding in his chest His tie was crooked so he straightened it Um do you want to dance with me he asked when he reached her She smiled sweetly in response

Um, hello? What does this even mean? Is his heart pounding in his chest, or is his tie crooked in his chest? Did he ask "Um, do you want to dance with me" or did he ask "When he reached her She smiled sweetly in response"?

Okay, be honest here. Does this paragraph make sense in any way, shape, or form? It's like one of those tests: If you can read this, you're really smart. But in this case, it's more like this: If you can read this, you must be from another planet because no human being can read this.

And let's not forget that punctuation saves lives. Consider:

Lets eat Grandma.

Let's eat, Grandma.

Please, take that extra millisecond of your time. Save your grandmother, and let the world know you are advocating conversations with family members and not cannibalism.