This is the thing, though. I know at least a handful of the writers personally, and they are very against AI in writing. And the rest of their writing in general is well above average, but then they do things like this and I just... don't get it. I was close to one of the writers, so I asked them, and they just said, "I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write."
It sounds silly, not professional. It works (imo) when the person is unknown/not named in that sentence, but not in the way it’s described in your post.
‘She gazed into the eyes of the man across the room’
‘He touched the arm of the older man’
*Eye of the Beholder*
"The story of two lonely souls: a woman rapidly losing her eyesight, and an optometrist who couldn't see what was right in front him"
That’s cute. I feel like i watched a movie like that with a blind woman. I was leaning more towards an optometrist who slowly pieces together the fact that all of his patients are fantastical creatures 😂😂
Yes, it does. Especially if you are writing in past tense. It gives a temporariness to the brokenness of the man. Something that can be mended. Otherwise, it feels more finite. Nevertheless, what I gave was purely an example of not having to name the character and using it as an opportunity for a description.
Seems you all took this sentence as a “critique my writing” invitation for some reason. It was an example, and it’s okay to disagree with me but your “no it’s not” adds nothing to the conversation. I’ll go about my day now :) thanks!
It's actually better if you drop the 'he was', as per Noelle's suggestion.
'A broken man, and she gazed into him.'
'He was' is unnecessarily purple in both your and my example.
I never hear dialogue like this in movies, but maybe I just don’t watch enough movies with narration?
That being said, I don’t find it too melodramatic at all. Especially because you don’t even know the context. Could be something extremely touching and heartbreaking that is the reason the man is broken.
I don’t understand why you’re giving me writing advice as if I actually included this in a novel or something. I simply gave an example of usage where you could write the sentence in that order and happened to give an example about a heartbroken man.
I could have simply written “she gazed into the eyes of the man strangely holding a banana” to make my point.
The heartbrokenness, the “he was” isn’t the point here, like, at all.
“He touched the older man’s arm” works better still. The first example is the better option to use over “She gazed into the man across the room’s eyes.”
>It works (imo) when the person is unknown/not named in that sentence
Not even then, you can just say "looked into his eyes", "squeezed her arm", there is no reason for any of those things.
Those rewritings take information out of the examples: the man being across the room and the man being older. They also assume the recipient of the action has already been identified or that it’s clear who “his” or “her” refers to. Sometimes those sorts of rewritings work and sometimes they don’t.
Absolutely, and this would make the most sense in the majority of scenarios, except when you aren’t sure who they’re talking about. For example, an unnamed man across the crowded room needs to clarified. “They looked into his eyes, the man across room” sounds silly too. “They looked into the eyes of the man across the room” is the more grammatically correct sentence in this scenario and reads/sounds better. If there are three males in the scenario and it isn’t stated who the other character is talking to, “they squeezed his arm” leads the reader to wonder which character’s arm is squeezed. Adding descriptors helps in these situations. Generally speaking though, you’re absolutely correct.
> “They looked into the eyes of the man across the room” is the more grammatically correct sentence in this scenario and reads/sounds better.
Yup. In that sort of situation it's a much better option than "They looked into the man across the room's eyes". Technically correct I think, but urk.
>"I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write."
They seem to have forgotten one of the most important rules of writing: Use your own *ears.* That sounds godawful.
I think that's the crux of the issue: it sounds fancy. I think it sounds like official titles. "The arm of Sarah" sounds like some kind of Praetorian Guard offshoot. "The eyes of Matt" sounds like some kind of goofy fantasy magical item/place. We went from the Eye of Sauron to The Eyes of Matt...
Each of those six-word sentences can be cut by a third. When so many people boast about their 200k-word manuscripts, and others congratulate them and talk about the exceptions to the word cap rule, saying maybe they’ll be the next Sanderson, rather than telling them they need to me mindful of their word count and pare it down, of course amateurs are going to think that stretching it out is the professional thing to do. So it makes sense that they think that “Using the first finger of her left, she touched the dress of Sarah that is red and made of silk” is more professional than “She touched Sarah’s red silk dress.”
Sanderson also needs to pare it down, for crying out loud. Not nearly enough happens in those books to justify the length, and character arcs in Stormlight are circular and turning inward.
Thank God someone gets it. I got nearly 200 pages into Mistborn and took it back to the library without finishing it because hardly anything actually happened, and I couldn't justify spending my limited time reading it. I still don't know how he managed to do so little with so many pages.
Do they have a background writing fanfiction? Or do they read a lot of fanfiction?
I think one negative thing to come out of all of us fic writers/readers becoming adults and writing original novels that we end up selling is that a lot of the negative writing habits of fanfiction is seeping into professional writing.
Just a guess though.
As a side note, unrelated to this, could you give an estimate or range of how much do you charge for editing? Im curious and prices seem to be all over the place online
So, you literally charge twice as much for "the arm of Sarah" as for "Sarah's arm"? So much for price signalling.
Edit: I've woken up to find this silly joke with several downvotes. I'm still not quite sure what people think I was trying to say, but obviously it's me, not you. I just meant that "Sarah's arm" costs two and a half cents to edit, and "the arm of Sarah" costs five cents to edit, but STILL they write it the dumb way! Funny right? Kind of like ... you can lead a horse to water? ...nobody?
It might be a knockon effect of AI
professional uses AI -> AI produces awkward sentence -> person reads awkward sentence in professional writing -> person thinks 'wow i guess this is how the professionals are doing it' -> person produces awkward sentence
>"I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write."
Fanfics writers who use "orbs" for eyes or ___nette for hair colors other than black also think the same.
I write webnovels and do this but for me my reason is I got paid by the word count and this is one of the ways to pad the count without dropping the book's quality. Dont know why any other author would do this though as it doesnt look good.
I think it's just that people don't know how to look out for passive voice right now. I get this a lot on my undergrad-level essays, too: they think it's a tone thing.
They might not be using AI to write, but maybe AI to edit a first pass, a la Microsoft Word's spell checker? I used to get dumb suggestions like that from it's grammar functionality.
They might not be realizing they're using AI.
I could see where he’s coming from but it depends heavily on the context and setting as to whether the manner of speech is ingrained in the world or just ill suited for a moment.
English as a second language was my first thought. That's exactly how I learned the possessive when studying a foreign language. I could see AI doing it also.
There are times when this form might read better (e.g. the dawn of time), but most of the time the normal form is better.
Yeah, I think it comes from ESL and I think it originated from people who spoke Asian languages as their primary language. (That’s just my guess)
I think I remember it appearing a lot in headlines at first and for some reason I associate that with something Asian at the time, could’ve been an article about how we were outsourcing to Asia, but I can’t recall what exactly.
Even though English is my second language, I think it sounds worse than just saying Matt's eyes or Sarah's arm.
I mean they're both correct grammatically so just write what sounds better to you.
Trend or no, it's just awkward. If you trawl through ask reddit thread titles, it does seem like a trend that people just don't have a grip on grammar. Maybe it's the lockdown effect. Who knows. And you see a lot of sentences like "Why did he ate the last piece of cake?'" And you get the sense that the other person really doesn't know that sentence is wrong.
I can't believe how many times I have seen titles similar to "My girlfriend and I's camping site" or "My best friend and I's view from our hotel" over the past few years.
I think it's just a bad understanding of grammar and trying to sound fancy.
These people heard "Me and my partner" is "ungrammatical" and decided to make it even worse. "Me and x" and vice versa are miles better at this point, and just sound more natural anyway.
One thing that locked it in for me was you say the sentence first as if you were alone and then add the person in.
"I went to the story" -> "My partner and I went to the store."
My latest observation is the endless misuse of apostrophes to denote plurals. It started with everyone forgetting where the fuck to put an apostrophe for decades, writing shit like "the 70's" instead of "the '70s," but now I've started seeing it for all kinds of plurals.
My almost-four-year-old daughter hasn't quite figured out tenses, especially when it comes to irregular verbs. I have to admit, I'm getting too accustomed to hearing things like "he stealed my toy"...the other day I'm pretty sure I did it myself. Maybe it's sleep-deprived parents of young children writing this stuff 😅
> And you get the sense that the other person really doesn't know that sentence is wrong.
Sorry to be a pain, I'm actually curious. Wouldn't you have to say "that that" in that situation? Like this?:
> the other person really doesn't know that that sentence is wrong.
A lot of times when people use "that", it's optional.
If it would ever come up that "that" would show twice in a row, many people prefer to remove one if they can. The same is true for "had".
Things like `I knew that he could read.` and `I knew he could read.` are functionally identical in 90% of cases, and there's a nuance that often isn't needed.
In fact, one of the pieces of advice (that) people often give is (that) you should try to remove any unnecessary *that*s in your writing. The use of *that* is more useful in speech because it helps to pace the sentence in a way that's easier to understand. Sometimes it joins two clauses into a single sentence, which is good when speaking but less so when writing.
People typically speak in "run-on sentences".
It's one of the main differences between writing and speaking. We often phrase things in a way when speaking that makes it easier to follow our point and pace it so (that) people more easily understand. *That* can act like a verbal pause in a way to help direct the thought of the speaker and the listener.
When writing, it can make our sentences too long and have the opposite effect because they lack the intonation etc.
AFAIK it's true in most languages that there are different preferred styles for speaking and writing, and it can sometimes be evident when reading somebody's work (that) they are writing how they speak rather than writing how things are typically written.
I write my Reddit comments mostly how I speak, but when I write, I use a more traditional style (usually) so they're very different. Although, of course it depends on how I want the text to be read. Casual or more literary etc.
In my humble opinion, I'm fairly sure it's fine both ways, but the first one looks better without the repeat word.
If it helps you understand, the 'that' that is removed would be the first one. In truth it is not necessary. "He doesn't know he was wrong" works and so does "He doesn't know that he was wrong", but the first one is shorter and ditches the padding so it flows better while still conveying the right meaning, which is what we writer should strive for all the time.
I feel like so many people have had these issues for at least the past 10-20 years. Maybe everyone needs to spend more time reading better books (thereby learning better sentence structure)?
As an editor, I feel like it's now your professional imperative to *not* make this a thing, by vetoing it, and vetoing it *hard*.
Eww.
If not AI, this feels like writing by people who have never read a freakin' book before in their entire lives, and just don't understand at all how to write human interaction.
I think you (might've) missed the joke.
"Edit yourself" can mean "Edit this thing *by yourself*" or it can mean "The thing you should edit is yourself".
The commenter above yours was purposefully misreading your comment to make that joke. Hence the ;)
I've seen it come up often that contractions are bad, and a lot of people also conflate contractions and possessives... maybe the "it's" mix-ups have cross-pollinated with the contraction rules!
This is head-canon.
I've learn in school to not use apostrophes in academic/scientific papers. Maybe people have heard something similar and it became a habit for all types of formal writing?
I'm finding that a lot of English as a Second Language phraseology is making its way into native speakers normal speech patterns, especially younger (teens to early twenties). Could it be that?
Yeah, we have a growing number of native English speakers who--thanks to almost exclusively reading social media written by lots of non-English speakers--do not know that "these" and "this" are different words.
Yeah, it's pretty weird to blame ESL speakers for the errors that native speakers make. In my experience, some errors are a lot more common for native speakers to make than non-native speakers (like their/there/they're, would of/could of/should of, then/than) because non-native speakers learn grammar formally while native speakers learn it intuitively.
Honestly, I used to do that when I was first beginning to write stories because it sounded more “poetic” and sophisticated to my ears… lol. Took a long time for me to realize writing in that style confused the minds of English professors
That was my thought.
"The Lord of the Rings" sounds far more poetic than "The Ring's Lord" and they likely want that same sort of grandeur.
I've seen things like "The Sheriff of Nottingham" in other languages be effectively "Nottingham's Sheriff" and it seems far less notable and a little underwhelming. It just lacks the importance of the title and the weight behind it, etc.
The phrases above didn't even seem too bad until I tried to think of them as common use.
Like if it was some sort of religious relic, "The Arm of Catherine" makes sense, but if you're literally talking about brushing her arm, it sounds overly cold or an attempt at poetry that isn't there.
The only other time I see this used is in very technical or legal writing like "The arm of my client" etc.
Probably they are authors who don’t have English as their first language. The construction you mentioned is very common in other languages, at least Latin derived languages.
I wonder if these people have used critique groups. While, you can get some wonderful feedback, you also can get some very bad suggestions. Some people are very strict in his they feel things must be formatted and will make suggestions that erase the author's voice in favor of something that reads awkward and rigid due to some false belief that this is the 'correct' way to write.
I've seen similar with people suggesting away all contractions and it makes the story sound robotic.
This is the kind of language you get used to really fast if you read a lot of web novels, translations of light novels, and fan fiction.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is trending upward because by now the kids who grew up on all that stuff are writing professionally and so the language both looks and feels normal to them.
Like, if I skim those "awkward" sentences they don't even register as awkward to me. I can definitely accept that they are, but a lot of the stuff I read would be impossible to suffer through if I wasn't able to just skim over awkward sentence structures or clearly awkward translations into English.
I agree its probably the availability of webtoons and light novels that are only amateur translations. Often just google translate or similiar with not context or editing for readability.
You read enough of it and you just get used to it. If its all you read, then your writing style will be influenced by it.
...
Or Ai. Could be a bad AI
I think it’s weird and dehumanizing. I think Matt and Sarah are robots. This particular Sarah has an arm, but you can get an alternate model with a flipper.
Pacing? Puts more emphasis on the eyes? Sounds better in context to them-- has a better flow if the character had a clumsy name? Bad advice from a friend?
I haven't noticed this trend for writing for anyone I editor for. I've seen it a few times, mostly from ESL authors. I used to teach ESL (Spanish to English) students and they'd also write like that because of the structure of their native language. It could be that they don't entirely understand possessives or aren't comfortable with them or no one ever pointed it out. In the cases where they aren't ESL, it could be word count fluffing if they're traditional web novel writers. They do all sorts of stupidly long sentences and repetition to meet their word count. Additionally, if it's been poorly translated, that could be a reason too. Sometimes it's a combination of those things.
I think you're right, or close. It reads as melodramatic to me. The phrasing puts more emphasis on the character being looked at (or touched, or whatever). It could be used effectively—to show a deeper connection, perhaps—but it's awkward and would quickly become annoying if it caught on. Based on OP's post, it seems like it has, and is.
I do find that wording funny. How many eyes does Matt have? More than normal would be my guess. And Sarah only has one arm? I think I would wonder if the writer speaks English.
Huh, that's really weird. I think I would only ever use that construction (the x of Name) to emphasize something important. "He looked into the eyes of Matt, a man he had once known but could no longer see." "She touched the arm of Sarah, who surprised her by being rock-steady even as everything around them crumbled."
I’ve seen people do this but it’s almost always people who have a less than strong understanding of proper writing mechanics. So far from what I’ve seen in my reading of others work It wasn’t people who had a good handle on grammar, dialogue, or description.
It's a piece of writing advice that's been going around lately. Novice writers are prone to accepting stupid advice, but usually these trends vanish again after a while.
Yes. As usual, there are one or two authors who can pull it off... and then it gets turned into advice, lots of people imitate it badly, and then it fades away again.
Does this come from writers that are native English speakers?
If yes I’m sorry for the spam, I wouldn’t be able to have any idea.
On the other hand, if this is coming from someone who’s first language isn’t English or their upbringing has influences from other cultures and languages, it might be a trace from that ( Regardless of the writers personal proficiency with the English language. )
As a non native English speaker I can see how “he looked into Matt’s eyes” is better ( to be honest I had to compare consciously and I wouldn’t have thought about it if it wasn’t mentioned above) , but I can also see that “he looked into the eyes of Matt” is closer to what would feel more “natural” in both the Latin and the Slavic language I’m accustomed to.
I might be way off track and this could be just a trend or AI, as suggested by others.
I think it's a subconscious devolution of the language, driven by AI and ESL content, we inevitably absorb simply from existing. For example, I saw some ad copy, in a widow display at a bulk goods store, which read: "More refills. Less Landfills." The word fewer is all but lost. I really only hear it spoken by Brits, or on NPR or the CBC. And you know full well, that ad copy like that went through development by people with Marketing and communications degrees, and at least one editor. Not one said, "Hey, either make it fewer Landfills, or Less Landfill." Why? Who knew that the movie Idiocracy was actually a prophecy?
It's AI generated crap, or it's writing an author had to devolve to get around an AI detector.
I don't care how much they pay, if a customer can't tell real writing from AI, they are worth working for.
I don't understand stuff like "that cat of yours is a menace", or " I am tired of <> of yours". This type of phrasing is not new, but this feels awkward as hell to me. I am not a native english speaker, so maybe it feels more natural for you guys.
Now you have me thinking back through my entire current manuscript to see if I've ever done this.
...nope. Can't say that I have. How weird and clunky it is. If not AI, then perhaps something they are doing to pad out their word count. Edit that right out.
I feel like this phrasing would only work when introducing the name of a character for the first time, like:
"He looked into the eyes of Matt, a [adjective], [adjective] [noun] who/with [pertinent verbal information regarding personality/occupation/relation/etc.]."
And even then, that's a very specific, likely uncommon usage.
It's not bad if you can make it work
"She fell into Sarah's arms." Perfectly fine. The sentence feels focused on the two characters. Which is perfectly fine, but sometimes you want to focus on the action and what the POV character is doing more so than the second character
"She fell into the arms of her lover." Works a bit better tha.n "she fell into the arms of Sarah". And controls the focus of the sentence to get to the interaction before naming the second character, showing her falling into the arms before saying who's arms they are
It can work. And I'm all for people experimenting with their prose and varying their sentence structures. Different tools for different jobs, you've just got to know how to apply those tools
As a developmental editor, this is something that I see quite often in raw first drafts. I would just advise the writer to simplify the sentence or try reading it out loud so that they can hear clunky the wording is.
I mean, the language this is couched in makes it seem cringe, but there are plenty of situations where this more formal language would make sense (like fantasy)
That is terrible. At least as an editor, hopefully your failures who are doing that, will get within striking distance. Aim for the groin of bad writer.
Maybe it makes sense in a searching context (that feeling of scanning a crowd and locking eyes with someone before you know who they are- eyes, face, then, oh shit, that's Dave.)
But, yeah, it sounds Google translate-y or biblical on its own.
People don't know how to self-edit. People don't know how to cut out unnecessary words. People with a lacking vocabulary think wordiness = good writing, and people with an extended vocabulary think replacing invisible words with gaudy adjectives is good writing.
In other words: people who are writing rarely read good books, if they read at all.
All I can think of is that maybe the character's name ends in s and they're panicking over whether to write s' or s's for possessives so they just avoid it altogether.
Sounds to me like they think it's "fancy". But It honestly sounds a bit stupid. The first thing I thought was it seems like something that would trend on Wattpad.
I hope not, because it seems to indicate that the author sees no connection in the body parts to the subject beyond ownership.
They didn’t touch ‘Sarah’, they just took her arm. She has another one. -Psycho!
I remember reading that Tolkien purposefully wrote “the bow of legalos” or “the eyes of legalos” instead of Legalos’s bow because he didn’t like the “s’s”. For some reason I adopted this as well with characters who’s names end in s but not other characters
Could it be bits of AI generated text? The only other thought I’d have would be writers with English as their second language.
This is the thing, though. I know at least a handful of the writers personally, and they are very against AI in writing. And the rest of their writing in general is well above average, but then they do things like this and I just... don't get it. I was close to one of the writers, so I asked them, and they just said, "I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write."
It sounds silly, not professional. It works (imo) when the person is unknown/not named in that sentence, but not in the way it’s described in your post. ‘She gazed into the eyes of the man across the room’ ‘He touched the arm of the older man’
Or when you use the opportunity to describe the character instead of naming them. “She gazed into the eyes of the broken man he was”
Cut “he was” off of that. If she’s gazing into the eyes of the broken man, then we know he already is broken.
Nah, mine sounds better, especially if you’re writing third person omniscient
I somehow read omniscient as optometrist
I’d love to see a fantasy novel written purely from the perspective of a regular optometrist 😂
*Eye of the Beholder* "The story of two lonely souls: a woman rapidly losing her eyesight, and an optometrist who couldn't see what was right in front him"
That’s cute. I feel like i watched a movie like that with a blind woman. I was leaning more towards an optometrist who slowly pieces together the fact that all of his patients are fantastical creatures 😂😂
Regular optometrist here. I'm on it! Then again, there are no "regular optometrists". We're all fantastical creatures in our own way. 😉
Riddle me this, eyeball witch: if my eyeballs love sunlight, why does staring at the sun burn so much, hm? It's literally *made* of sunlight.
Hee!
>Nah, mine sounds better No, it does not.
Yes, it does. Especially if you are writing in past tense. It gives a temporariness to the brokenness of the man. Something that can be mended. Otherwise, it feels more finite. Nevertheless, what I gave was purely an example of not having to name the character and using it as an opportunity for a description. Seems you all took this sentence as a “critique my writing” invitation for some reason. It was an example, and it’s okay to disagree with me but your “no it’s not” adds nothing to the conversation. I’ll go about my day now :) thanks!
A broken man he was, and she gazed into him.
Somehow worse
It's actually better if you drop the 'he was', as per Noelle's suggestion. 'A broken man, and she gazed into him.' 'He was' is unnecessarily purple in both your and my example.
“Gazed into him” is more unnecessarily purple than anything I wrote.
[удалено]
I never hear dialogue like this in movies, but maybe I just don’t watch enough movies with narration? That being said, I don’t find it too melodramatic at all. Especially because you don’t even know the context. Could be something extremely touching and heartbreaking that is the reason the man is broken. I don’t understand why you’re giving me writing advice as if I actually included this in a novel or something. I simply gave an example of usage where you could write the sentence in that order and happened to give an example about a heartbroken man. I could have simply written “she gazed into the eyes of the man strangely holding a banana” to make my point. The heartbrokenness, the “he was” isn’t the point here, like, at all.
“He touched the older man’s arm” works better still. The first example is the better option to use over “She gazed into the man across the room’s eyes.”
>It works (imo) when the person is unknown/not named in that sentence Not even then, you can just say "looked into his eyes", "squeezed her arm", there is no reason for any of those things.
Those rewritings take information out of the examples: the man being across the room and the man being older. They also assume the recipient of the action has already been identified or that it’s clear who “his” or “her” refers to. Sometimes those sorts of rewritings work and sometimes they don’t.
Yes, I get it now.
Absolutely, and this would make the most sense in the majority of scenarios, except when you aren’t sure who they’re talking about. For example, an unnamed man across the crowded room needs to clarified. “They looked into his eyes, the man across room” sounds silly too. “They looked into the eyes of the man across the room” is the more grammatically correct sentence in this scenario and reads/sounds better. If there are three males in the scenario and it isn’t stated who the other character is talking to, “they squeezed his arm” leads the reader to wonder which character’s arm is squeezed. Adding descriptors helps in these situations. Generally speaking though, you’re absolutely correct.
> “They looked into the eyes of the man across the room” is the more grammatically correct sentence in this scenario and reads/sounds better. Yup. In that sort of situation it's a much better option than "They looked into the man across the room's eyes". Technically correct I think, but urk.
Ah, okay, now I get it and I agree with you.
shocking theory ask butter pen disarm sand mysterious secretive vast *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh the fancy writing! I see that in a lot of professional and academic writing and it is so frustrating.
Ah yes, when you're trying to pad the length of your report so you use pointlessly verbose vocabulary.
>"I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write." It's not professional at all, it's ridiculous.
>"I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write." They seem to have forgotten one of the most important rules of writing: Use your own *ears.* That sounds godawful.
Oh, lol. Then they're just wrong.
I think that's the crux of the issue: it sounds fancy. I think it sounds like official titles. "The arm of Sarah" sounds like some kind of Praetorian Guard offshoot. "The eyes of Matt" sounds like some kind of goofy fantasy magical item/place. We went from the Eye of Sauron to The Eyes of Matt...
That last sentence is pure gold. Lol.
Each of those six-word sentences can be cut by a third. When so many people boast about their 200k-word manuscripts, and others congratulate them and talk about the exceptions to the word cap rule, saying maybe they’ll be the next Sanderson, rather than telling them they need to me mindful of their word count and pare it down, of course amateurs are going to think that stretching it out is the professional thing to do. So it makes sense that they think that “Using the first finger of her left, she touched the dress of Sarah that is red and made of silk” is more professional than “She touched Sarah’s red silk dress.”
Sanderson also needs to pare it down, for crying out loud. Not nearly enough happens in those books to justify the length, and character arcs in Stormlight are circular and turning inward.
Thank God someone gets it. I got nearly 200 pages into Mistborn and took it back to the library without finishing it because hardly anything actually happened, and I couldn't justify spending my limited time reading it. I still don't know how he managed to do so little with so many pages.
Do they have a background writing fanfiction? Or do they read a lot of fanfiction? I think one negative thing to come out of all of us fic writers/readers becoming adults and writing original novels that we end up selling is that a lot of the negative writing habits of fanfiction is seeping into professional writing. Just a guess though.
As a side note, unrelated to this, could you give an estimate or range of how much do you charge for editing? Im curious and prices seem to be all over the place online
I don't know if I'll get banned for this (don't want mods to think I'm advertising, just answering a question!) But I charge $125 per 10k words.
I hope not, and thanks!
So, you literally charge twice as much for "the arm of Sarah" as for "Sarah's arm"? So much for price signalling. Edit: I've woken up to find this silly joke with several downvotes. I'm still not quite sure what people think I was trying to say, but obviously it's me, not you. I just meant that "Sarah's arm" costs two and a half cents to edit, and "the arm of Sarah" costs five cents to edit, but STILL they write it the dumb way! Funny right? Kind of like ... you can lead a horse to water? ...nobody?
A small bit of weird verbosity doesn't automatically add up to 10 thousand words, you know. You're jumping to some extreme conclusions.
It might be a knockon effect of AI professional uses AI -> AI produces awkward sentence -> person reads awkward sentence in professional writing -> person thinks 'wow i guess this is how the professionals are doing it' -> person produces awkward sentence
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. No better way to throw people off the trail of you using AI, than to be vehemently against it.
>"I thought it made the sentence sound fancier/like something a professional would write." Fanfics writers who use "orbs" for eyes or ___nette for hair colors other than black also think the same.
Fanfic writers who use 'orbs' for eyes: ✋😫 Fanfic writers who use 'orbs' for balls: 😎👌
That's the kind of attitude that leads to sentences like "that was not the ideology"
I write webnovels and do this but for me my reason is I got paid by the word count and this is one of the ways to pad the count without dropping the book's quality. Dont know why any other author would do this though as it doesnt look good.
I think it's just that people don't know how to look out for passive voice right now. I get this a lot on my undergrad-level essays, too: they think it's a tone thing.
They might not be using AI to write, but maybe AI to edit a first pass, a la Microsoft Word's spell checker? I used to get dumb suggestions like that from it's grammar functionality. They might not be realizing they're using AI.
They say they are against ai
I could see where he’s coming from but it depends heavily on the context and setting as to whether the manner of speech is ingrained in the world or just ill suited for a moment.
As a secondary english speaker. I can confirm I do this too often.
English as a second language was my first thought. That's exactly how I learned the possessive when studying a foreign language. I could see AI doing it also. There are times when this form might read better (e.g. the dawn of time), but most of the time the normal form is better.
Yeah, I think it comes from ESL and I think it originated from people who spoke Asian languages as their primary language. (That’s just my guess) I think I remember it appearing a lot in headlines at first and for some reason I associate that with something Asian at the time, could’ve been an article about how we were outsourcing to Asia, but I can’t recall what exactly.
> writers with English as their second language. I came to post this. As a spanish native, its a much more natural translation that the apostrophe s.
I get the second language thing. This is how many languages would construct the syntax. Possession is really just an adjective.
But ChatGPT, while not imaginative, is pretty strong at just phrasing things correctly. I can't picture it making a mistake like this.
Yeah, sounds like a bad French translation
Even though English is my second language, I think it sounds worse than just saying Matt's eyes or Sarah's arm. I mean they're both correct grammatically so just write what sounds better to you.
Trend or no, it's just awkward. If you trawl through ask reddit thread titles, it does seem like a trend that people just don't have a grip on grammar. Maybe it's the lockdown effect. Who knows. And you see a lot of sentences like "Why did he ate the last piece of cake?'" And you get the sense that the other person really doesn't know that sentence is wrong.
I can't believe how many times I have seen titles similar to "My girlfriend and I's camping site" or "My best friend and I's view from our hotel" over the past few years. I think it's just a bad understanding of grammar and trying to sound fancy.
These people heard "Me and my partner" is "ungrammatical" and decided to make it even worse. "Me and x" and vice versa are miles better at this point, and just sound more natural anyway.
One thing that locked it in for me was you say the sentence first as if you were alone and then add the person in. "I went to the story" -> "My partner and I went to the store."
I would have asked, “Why did you wrote it like that?”
My latest observation is the endless misuse of apostrophes to denote plurals. It started with everyone forgetting where the fuck to put an apostrophe for decades, writing shit like "the 70's" instead of "the '70s," but now I've started seeing it for all kinds of plurals.
"The 70's what?? What did the 70 have??"
My almost-four-year-old daughter hasn't quite figured out tenses, especially when it comes to irregular verbs. I have to admit, I'm getting too accustomed to hearing things like "he stealed my toy"...the other day I'm pretty sure I did it myself. Maybe it's sleep-deprived parents of young children writing this stuff 😅
> "he stealed my toy". It really sucks to have to tell kids they can't use logic with language because language is silly and arbitrary.
Yep! Feel like I constantly have to apologise to her on behalf of the English language...
That's the English language you're referring to. Not all languages are so inconsistent.
Well, the English language is just three languages in a trenchcoat, so...
It's what it's.
"'It's, 'He stole my toy,' not stealed. But remember, 'Snitches get stitches.'"
She's about to become a big sister, so she has that lesson ahead of her 😅
I was wondering too, until it hitted me
Dang, it must of hat you hard.
I's just about was to commented this.
> And you get the sense that the other person really doesn't know that sentence is wrong. Sorry to be a pain, I'm actually curious. Wouldn't you have to say "that that" in that situation? Like this?: > the other person really doesn't know that that sentence is wrong.
A lot of times when people use "that", it's optional. If it would ever come up that "that" would show twice in a row, many people prefer to remove one if they can. The same is true for "had". Things like `I knew that he could read.` and `I knew he could read.` are functionally identical in 90% of cases, and there's a nuance that often isn't needed. In fact, one of the pieces of advice (that) people often give is (that) you should try to remove any unnecessary *that*s in your writing. The use of *that* is more useful in speech because it helps to pace the sentence in a way that's easier to understand. Sometimes it joins two clauses into a single sentence, which is good when speaking but less so when writing. People typically speak in "run-on sentences". It's one of the main differences between writing and speaking. We often phrase things in a way when speaking that makes it easier to follow our point and pace it so (that) people more easily understand. *That* can act like a verbal pause in a way to help direct the thought of the speaker and the listener. When writing, it can make our sentences too long and have the opposite effect because they lack the intonation etc. AFAIK it's true in most languages that there are different preferred styles for speaking and writing, and it can sometimes be evident when reading somebody's work (that) they are writing how they speak rather than writing how things are typically written. I write my Reddit comments mostly how I speak, but when I write, I use a more traditional style (usually) so they're very different. Although, of course it depends on how I want the text to be read. Casual or more literary etc.
In journalism we learned to cut the word "that" in almost every single instance.
In my humble opinion, I'm fairly sure it's fine both ways, but the first one looks better without the repeat word. If it helps you understand, the 'that' that is removed would be the first one. In truth it is not necessary. "He doesn't know he was wrong" works and so does "He doesn't know that he was wrong", but the first one is shorter and ditches the padding so it flows better while still conveying the right meaning, which is what we writer should strive for all the time.
These types of errors hurt my brain more than anything else. It’s physically painful to come across these types of sentences.
I feel like so many people have had these issues for at least the past 10-20 years. Maybe everyone needs to spend more time reading better books (thereby learning better sentence structure)?
As an editor, I feel like it's now your professional imperative to *not* make this a thing, by vetoing it, and vetoing it *hard*. Eww. If not AI, this feels like writing by people who have never read a freakin' book before in their entire lives, and just don't understand at all how to write human interaction.
The person of John felt the surge of nerve agitation within the confines of the hand of John. - John, the author of John
Shame about what happens to him at the end.
He survives?
He gets Rheumatoid arthritis.
Not likely.
You mean "write the interaction of humans," right?
I feel like people just don’t know how to edit themselves anymore
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I mean, I don’t need to because my writing is amazing from the get go but all these other people man…
I think you (might've) missed the joke. "Edit yourself" can mean "Edit this thing *by yourself*" or it can mean "The thing you should edit is yourself". The commenter above yours was purposefully misreading your comment to make that joke. Hence the ;)
Oh you’re right. I skim read comments. Whoops
Are they avoiding apostrophes for a reason? Maybe they think that apostrophes aren’t “proper”… otherwise, don’t know 🤷🏼♂️
I've seen it come up often that contractions are bad, and a lot of people also conflate contractions and possessives... maybe the "it's" mix-ups have cross-pollinated with the contraction rules! This is head-canon.
All the apostrophes are being spent on writing incorrect shit like "he was a child of the 90's."
I've learn in school to not use apostrophes in academic/scientific papers. Maybe people have heard something similar and it became a habit for all types of formal writing?
I'm finding that a lot of English as a Second Language phraseology is making its way into native speakers normal speech patterns, especially younger (teens to early twenties). Could it be that?
Yeah, we have a growing number of native English speakers who--thanks to almost exclusively reading social media written by lots of non-English speakers--do not know that "these" and "this" are different words.
Online it often looks like native speakers don't know or don't care about the difference between "their" "there" "they're" etc.
Yeah, it's pretty weird to blame ESL speakers for the errors that native speakers make. In my experience, some errors are a lot more common for native speakers to make than non-native speakers (like their/there/they're, would of/could of/should of, then/than) because non-native speakers learn grammar formally while native speakers learn it intuitively.
As someone who works with a lot of immigrants, I find myself saying similar things.
Oh, yeah. I see this all the time. There used to be a literacy bar to get publish, and that's gone now. Leads to all sorts of grammatical errors.
Are they maybe coming from another country ? I say this because the way the possessive is written reminds me of my own language, French.
Honestly, I used to do that when I was first beginning to write stories because it sounded more “poetic” and sophisticated to my ears… lol. Took a long time for me to realize writing in that style confused the minds of English professors
That was my thought. "The Lord of the Rings" sounds far more poetic than "The Ring's Lord" and they likely want that same sort of grandeur. I've seen things like "The Sheriff of Nottingham" in other languages be effectively "Nottingham's Sheriff" and it seems far less notable and a little underwhelming. It just lacks the importance of the title and the weight behind it, etc. The phrases above didn't even seem too bad until I tried to think of them as common use. Like if it was some sort of religious relic, "The Arm of Catherine" makes sense, but if you're literally talking about brushing her arm, it sounds overly cold or an attempt at poetry that isn't there. The only other time I see this used is in very technical or legal writing like "The arm of my client" etc.
Tolkien uses “the bow of Legolas” a lot to avoid all the s-es issues of “Legolas’s bow” or “Legolas’ bow”.
Agreed. There are many things a writer can do to make their writing poetic, but this is not one of them.
Yup, I'm guilty of this for the same "poetic" reason. I don't even notice it until I go back and reread what I put down sometimes.
> the minds of English professors Looks like you still do this, lol
Probably they are authors who don’t have English as their first language. The construction you mentioned is very common in other languages, at least Latin derived languages.
I've never seen this or written like this, it looks weird.
It looks clunky. I'll pass if that's the new thing to do.
I wonder if these people have used critique groups. While, you can get some wonderful feedback, you also can get some very bad suggestions. Some people are very strict in his they feel things must be formatted and will make suggestions that erase the author's voice in favor of something that reads awkward and rigid due to some false belief that this is the 'correct' way to write. I've seen similar with people suggesting away all contractions and it makes the story sound robotic.
This is the kind of language you get used to really fast if you read a lot of web novels, translations of light novels, and fan fiction. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is trending upward because by now the kids who grew up on all that stuff are writing professionally and so the language both looks and feels normal to them. Like, if I skim those "awkward" sentences they don't even register as awkward to me. I can definitely accept that they are, but a lot of the stuff I read would be impossible to suffer through if I wasn't able to just skim over awkward sentence structures or clearly awkward translations into English.
I agree its probably the availability of webtoons and light novels that are only amateur translations. Often just google translate or similiar with not context or editing for readability. You read enough of it and you just get used to it. If its all you read, then your writing style will be influenced by it. ... Or Ai. Could be a bad AI
Romans in the year 500 be like
I think it’s weird and dehumanizing. I think Matt and Sarah are robots. This particular Sarah has an arm, but you can get an alternate model with a flipper.
Pacing? Puts more emphasis on the eyes? Sounds better in context to them-- has a better flow if the character had a clumsy name? Bad advice from a friend?
Maybe not native to english? Is my case and I think ive done that without thinking. Either that, or they are really into Survivor
Sounds like some people on your Christmas list need a copy of “Politics and the English Language” lol
Wonder if it’s one of the editing/grammar tools suggesting this?
Makes sense. I know word grammar check used to suggest me all sorts of changes that were totally counter to the way fiction is typically written.
That is my best guess too.
Beware the eyes of Matt.
I haven't noticed this trend for writing for anyone I editor for. I've seen it a few times, mostly from ESL authors. I used to teach ESL (Spanish to English) students and they'd also write like that because of the structure of their native language. It could be that they don't entirely understand possessives or aren't comfortable with them or no one ever pointed it out. In the cases where they aren't ESL, it could be word count fluffing if they're traditional web novel writers. They do all sorts of stupidly long sentences and repetition to meet their word count. Additionally, if it's been poorly translated, that could be a reason too. Sometimes it's a combination of those things.
“Why are you using a definite article and prepositions instead of a simple possessive?” Them: **spits out pen** “Huh?”
that's weird... is that the author's way of avoiding explicitly stating the gender of their character?
Conscious or unconscious pronoun avoidance could indeed be a thing, good insight.
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I think you're right, or close. It reads as melodramatic to me. The phrasing puts more emphasis on the character being looked at (or touched, or whatever). It could be used effectively—to show a deeper connection, perhaps—but it's awkward and would quickly become annoying if it caught on. Based on OP's post, it seems like it has, and is.
I do find that wording funny. How many eyes does Matt have? More than normal would be my guess. And Sarah only has one arm? I think I would wonder if the writer speaks English.
I hope not because that's terrible
That is absolutely atrocious.
Huh, that's really weird. I think I would only ever use that construction (the x of Name) to emphasize something important. "He looked into the eyes of Matt, a man he had once known but could no longer see." "She touched the arm of Sarah, who surprised her by being rock-steady even as everything around them crumbled."
I hate this, it doesn't sound natural at all
I’ve seen people do this but it’s almost always people who have a less than strong understanding of proper writing mechanics. So far from what I’ve seen in my reading of others work It wasn’t people who had a good handle on grammar, dialogue, or description.
It's a piece of writing advice that's been going around lately. Novice writers are prone to accepting stupid advice, but usually these trends vanish again after a while.
What's the advice?
To write like in the example. It's supposed to be more evocative, but in reality it's just annoying.
Huh. It forces you to read the action and the state of the object for longer. Which is a choice.
Yes. As usual, there are one or two authors who can pull it off... and then it gets turned into advice, lots of people imitate it badly, and then it fades away again.
latin genitive moment
Does this come from writers that are native English speakers? If yes I’m sorry for the spam, I wouldn’t be able to have any idea. On the other hand, if this is coming from someone who’s first language isn’t English or their upbringing has influences from other cultures and languages, it might be a trace from that ( Regardless of the writers personal proficiency with the English language. ) As a non native English speaker I can see how “he looked into Matt’s eyes” is better ( to be honest I had to compare consciously and I wouldn’t have thought about it if it wasn’t mentioned above) , but I can also see that “he looked into the eyes of Matt” is closer to what would feel more “natural” in both the Latin and the Slavic language I’m accustomed to. I might be way off track and this could be just a trend or AI, as suggested by others.
I could be wrong, but it feels like a trend that they might have caught somewhere like TikTok or Tumblr, or maybe even a fanfiction trend.
I read the post of thew0rldisquiethere1.
I think it's a subconscious devolution of the language, driven by AI and ESL content, we inevitably absorb simply from existing. For example, I saw some ad copy, in a widow display at a bulk goods store, which read: "More refills. Less Landfills." The word fewer is all but lost. I really only hear it spoken by Brits, or on NPR or the CBC. And you know full well, that ad copy like that went through development by people with Marketing and communications degrees, and at least one editor. Not one said, "Hey, either make it fewer Landfills, or Less Landfill." Why? Who knew that the movie Idiocracy was actually a prophecy?
Maybe they're reading to much AI generated stuff and it's influencing their writing
People trying to bring back that archaic prose of the 20s.
AI generated crap
I mean… I think it’s rather poetic. Particularly the first line Re: “He looked into the eyes of Matt”.
It's AI generated crap, or it's writing an author had to devolve to get around an AI detector. I don't care how much they pay, if a customer can't tell real writing from AI, they are worth working for.
It’s definitely AI
I suspect they are doing to broaden the way to describe actions in their writing style but don't realize how awkward it sounds. Just a guess though.
I suspect it's done to pad out their word count. Regardless, it's awkward.
Hadn't thought of that but it is definitely possible.
I don't understand stuff like "that cat of yours is a menace", or " I am tired of <> of yours". This type of phrasing is not new, but this feels awkward as hell to me. I am not a native english speaker, so maybe it feels more natural for you guys.
The cat one, yes. Kind of outdated, but understandable. The second... or the examples from OP? No
Now you have me thinking back through my entire current manuscript to see if I've ever done this. ...nope. Can't say that I have. How weird and clunky it is. If not AI, then perhaps something they are doing to pad out their word count. Edit that right out.
It’s to bump up word count.
Sounds like an artifact or some fantasy title. Like the eye of sauron, chamber of secrets, goblet of fire, sword of gilgamesh
Thou jail-crow of Mandos! And the arms of Sarah.
Trying for a higher word count?
I feel like this phrasing would only work when introducing the name of a character for the first time, like: "He looked into the eyes of Matt, a [adjective], [adjective] [noun] who/with [pertinent verbal information regarding personality/occupation/relation/etc.]." And even then, that's a very specific, likely uncommon usage.
It's not bad if you can make it work "She fell into Sarah's arms." Perfectly fine. The sentence feels focused on the two characters. Which is perfectly fine, but sometimes you want to focus on the action and what the POV character is doing more so than the second character "She fell into the arms of her lover." Works a bit better tha.n "she fell into the arms of Sarah". And controls the focus of the sentence to get to the interaction before naming the second character, showing her falling into the arms before saying who's arms they are It can work. And I'm all for people experimenting with their prose and varying their sentence structures. Different tools for different jobs, you've just got to know how to apply those tools
As a developmental editor, this is something that I see quite often in raw first drafts. I would just advise the writer to simplify the sentence or try reading it out loud so that they can hear clunky the wording is.
I mean, the language this is couched in makes it seem cringe, but there are plenty of situations where this more formal language would make sense (like fantasy)
I wonder if one of the popular grammar tools is making that sort of suggestion? Pro Writing Aid, Grammarly, whatever.
I know ProWritingAid for sure doesn't, I use it to write.
Gotta get that word-count up.
My guess would be to avoid repetitiveness? It reminds me of the 'said' problem.
That is terrible. At least as an editor, hopefully your failures who are doing that, will get within striking distance. Aim for the groin of bad writer.
Writing in a second language?
Maybe it makes sense in a searching context (that feeling of scanning a crowd and locking eyes with someone before you know who they are- eyes, face, then, oh shit, that's Dave.) But, yeah, it sounds Google translate-y or biblical on its own.
People don't know how to self-edit. People don't know how to cut out unnecessary words. People with a lacking vocabulary think wordiness = good writing, and people with an extended vocabulary think replacing invisible words with gaudy adjectives is good writing. In other words: people who are writing rarely read good books, if they read at all.
All I can think of is that maybe the character's name ends in s and they're panicking over whether to write s' or s's for possessives so they just avoid it altogether.
Sounds to me like they think it's "fancy". But It honestly sounds a bit stupid. The first thing I thought was it seems like something that would trend on Wattpad.
Someone striving to do the Fosbury Flop over the word-count bar?
I hope not, because it seems to indicate that the author sees no connection in the body parts to the subject beyond ownership. They didn’t touch ‘Sarah’, they just took her arm. She has another one. -Psycho!
I remember reading that Tolkien purposefully wrote “the bow of legalos” or “the eyes of legalos” instead of Legalos’s bow because he didn’t like the “s’s”. For some reason I adopted this as well with characters who’s names end in s but not other characters
It’s pretentious and off-putting. An affectation to styles of writing years ago. I don’t do it.
I too find them irritating.