Grammar and Layout: An SOS Guide to Attractive Text Presentation in Ten Tips

Writing ABCs

After reading a shiz-tonne of fanfics I have seen it all on a grammatical scale, from things written so perfectly they want to make me cry, written by someone who could pass as an English teacher in my books, to grammar that could also make me cry because it looks like a five-year old wrote it.

I want to note this is a guide focusing on the practical side of writing, meaning layout and grammar, not story-telling aspects like introductions, plot development and how to write an engaging story, this is how to make it attractive physically.

So, here are my top ten tips to make a fanfic more professional aesthetically and grammatically.

1. Spelling
We've all seen spelling mistakes. I have to ignore them more often than not because I know the author probably gets hassled enough by those who are so shook by it they need to comment. Of course, sometimes it's in a helpful context but some of the comments I've seen are really aggressive about it. I understand autocorrect can be a bish and sometimes stuff words up, but honestly:

Please please PLEASE, know the difference between the following:
- THERE, THEIR AND THEY'RE
- YOUR AND YOU'RE
- TO AND TOO

Some others include:
- Definitely and defiantly (I really don't know what it is but these are mixed up a lot)
- Poor and pour
- Weather and whether
- Bare and bear
- Then and than
- Accept and except
- Whose and who's
- Check and cheque
- Allowed and aloud
- Cue and queue
- Chocking and choking
- Scared, scarred and sacred
- Through and threw
- Quiet and quite
- Where, we're and were
- It's and its

Let me know if I missed any or need to elaborate but those are the ones that came to me in the moment.

If you aren't sure of how to spell something or even what tense to use, a 10-second google won't hurt.

I mention tenses because I see the wrong tense of a verb used too often as well.

2. Paragraphs
I may just have written too many essays in my time but I get so annoyed when stories aren't written with paragraphs.

They are a way to break up text into smaller, more digestible chunks of writing that communicate points efficiently without devaluing another point.

It is so much more aesthetically pleasing as well to see paragraphs rather than a huge chunk of text, because then I have to track who's doing what and who's talking to who and it gets very overwhelming which brings me to:

3. Dialogue
Like paragraphs, dialogue is much easier to follow if it's broken into their own lines for similar reasons. For example:

"Hey Martha, did you know girafes have blue tongues?" Bobby asked while jumping on a pogo-stick.

"No I didn't, thanks for sharing that with me Bobby!" Martha replied as she shoved a chocolate bar into her face-hole.

"Just spreading the knowledge!" Bobby laughed before yeeting himself to the nearest McDonald's.

Now we have example number two:

"Hey Martha did you know a large number of fanfics on Wattpad are severely overrated solely because people get attracted to them because of their high view-count?" Bobby asked. "No I didn't Bobby." Martha said as she read some cheap fanfic with "Bad Boy" in the title. "It's such a shame because so many fanfics don't get the recognition they deserve." Bobby said sadly.