On Writing Styles and Grammar

[Warden-Yarn15]

As a non-native English speaker, I always prided myself whenever someone compliments me on my grasp of the language and even more so if they didn't realize initially that I was not one. But of course, no one's grasp of any language, be they Native or Foreign Practioner, will ever be perfect - a fact that I couldn't accept until recently.

Though I've been criticized before by a co-author of mine, I did realize that sometimes, I do not entirely agree with Grammarly's spell checker. So when said co-author approached me and told me that said chapter of mine was full of errors, I was a bit annoyed as the style was supposedly from the perspective of a woman in the Edwardian era in the Upper Class, and in my mind, her writings would be stuffier than the modern writer - even if I don't truly understand how they wrote letters back in the day.

I copy+pasted said exchange to judge for yourself. Just know that the formatting is strange as it was from a Discord conversation of ours:

At that very moment, a sudden feeling had came upon me of someone being close-by, and out of instinct, I turned around and threw a punch at whoever was behind me...

Now... now you must be joking with me.
had came upon me?
That can't possibly be right!
I'm pretty sure it should be came upon me
Had come upon me sounds like a process that started, and terminated, in the past.
Also my spellchecker agrees with me.
It protests when I say "had came upon me"

With that said, I did have fun writing the way my character wrote her story, even if it meant that there would be the cursed red circle at the bottom right of my screen indefinitely. But that does the beg question.

I understand that Grammarly does not take into account one's writing style, but is the author wrong in this case? Should one be allowed to sacrifice what is grammatically correct if it fits the prose/style of the story they are writing, or is it a case of stubbornness that will not lead to anything positive?

You'll probably hate me for this, but there's a video out there of Jordan Peterson being angry at a stubborn author. It scared me somewhat to the degree that, maybe I truly have become stubborn and made myself unable to learn, as I do not believe that the person will know if they've improved unless they've talked to their peers.

At least, in the case for me.

 

[Dissonant Soundtrack]

"had come upon me" has entirely different connotations on CHYOA

 

[TheLowKing]

had came upon me

I know nothing about upper class Edwardian English, but in this particular case I would've written either "had come upon me" or "came upon me". Even if "had came upon me" was at one point correct, I would try to convey dated language using mostly archaic words, spelling sparingly, and grammar not at all.

Generally speaking, though, I agree with you. Intentionally making mistakes for style points can be a valid decision to make. If your character is a dumb hick from Kansas, they're not going to speak like a college-attending valley girl from California. They'd be making plain mistakes (on account of lack of schoolin') and have a different focab.. vocub... words, y'hear? Arguably, it's even necessary to do so. It'd break your immersion if that hick suddenly went, like, whoa, bros before hoes dude!

However, I'd err on the side of caution: you shouldn't drown your dialogue in every linguistic ideosyncracy you can come up with, lest it lose all meaning. Include enough to get the point across, but don't overdo it. Subtlety is king.

There are, of course, different opinions.

 

[Cuchuilain]

I guess in dialogue, as long as you get the authentic voice of your characters across, their grasp of the rules of grammar are not very important and flaws could even be beneficial in establishing the characters. If you're narrating in a first person POV (which it sounds a bit like in the discord section) I think it changes things a little as you're almost expressing your own voice.

 

[insertnamehere]

"had came upon me"
1. parses awkwardly in the sentence;
2. is grammatically incorrect in this case;
3. does not evoke either old-fashioned or upper-class language, let alone both.
It could be replaced with either "came upon me" or "had come upon me" to make your usage technically correct, but I personally would avoid the phrase entirely because I think it sounds strange regardless. Your best argument in favour of it is that "came upon me" has a sort of British impact. Perhaps you could say "struck me" or "came over me". That said, this does seem to be a bit of an overreaction for a one letter difference (as does Jordan Peterson threatening to murder a student for lacking writing skills).

On the broader topic of "bending the bars" in pursuit of better writing: it is certainly often beneficial to compose sentences in a manner that does not perfectly conform to the established rules of the English language, but this fact does not magically turn bad writing into good writing. Many times, including some on CHYOA, I've seen the sentiment that a lack of awareness or understanding of how to write correctly is a stylistic choice. Some even believe it makes you enlightened; ignoring spelling and grammar makes you a free thinker that doesn't mindlessly submit to the totalitarian agenda of Machiavellian academics... or something. As you can imagine, the intersection between such people and writers who are actually capable of pulling off improper English is not very large.

For example I might. Decide to write like. This but just because. I don't know how to use. Full stops properly. Doesn't mean this isn't. Excruciatingly. Unpleasant to read.

The rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation are not arbitrary, but exist as very wise guidelines to improve the quality of your writing. Breaking them should usually be done with intention, and only with a very thorough understanding of how the rule works, why the rule is usually followed, and what it means to ignore it. If you know what you're doing, it's okay to, for instance, write incomplete sentences. Sometimes.

Another common error I see is failing to understand what a rule actually is, and incorrectly believing that successful authors break it all the time. Consider, as an example, this very sentence which I am composing, that is unusually long, perhaps annoyingly so, certainly unnecessarily so, but is not actually a run-on sentence, and is also not, in my assessment, technically in violation of any commonly accepted rules of grammar, because it is, in fact, a chain of dependent clauses, each correctly appended with conjunctions like "but" and "because", and littered with nonrestrictive clauses, making it a prime example of the sort of excessively long sentences more common in older English texts, where hefty descriptions were commonplace, and which may have drawn the notice of naive readers who, upon reading such sentences, might have assumed that they were particularly well-executed run-on sentences, rather than the elaborately crafted entanglements of barely legal commas that they really are. A writer with a weak grasp on sentence structure would struggle to achieve the above, they might not even understand the difference between that sentence and this sentence, which is a run-on sentence, it's actually a set of completely independent clauses recklessly fused with nothing more than naked commas, perhaps you find it harder to read, you'll find this is definitely more confusing on average, it's also completely incorrect. It's easy to underestimate what you're "allowed" to do in perfect English grammar, and you may be surprised by how making the effort to follow these principles, even when you're trying to be unorthodox, often results in better writing.