Basics 1: Spelling and Grammar

Why spelling and grammar are important.

Think about a computer for a moment. What happens if you install the wrong driver for your (insert thingy here)? It won't work with the wrong driver. Okay, I understand that it's not very likely because either the Wizard or Diagnostics will usually take care of everything for you. That may or may not have been a bad example, so lets use a different one. Let's say that you want a dedicated graphics card to improve gaming on your computer. So you go out and buy one and remove the cover from your desktop and... oh dear. It seems that you bought a graphics card that specifically fits a different computer's hardware, and not yours. Well that sucks. You were all excited too.

The point I'm trying to make is that there's a mismatch. When we learn to read, we learn to read, so what you mean to write and what you actually write could potentially become two different things, and then the idea you're trying to convey gets lost in translation. Well, sometimes, I guess. The minds we've been given can, more often than not, translate the mistakes into what was actually meant. Don't rely on that.

Instead, I suggest that you practice doing it right. There is a good reason for doing this in storytelling. When we tell a story we want to establish a natural flow that will draw the reader in, and a reader who must translate misspellings and grammatical errors is less likely to become absorbed into the story, because reading becomes too troublesome. They're also less likely to take the author seriously, because the author clearly doesn't know wtf they're doing. (I understand that it doesn't quite work that way, but we're keeping the reader's perspective in mind here.)

As I mentioned earlier, spelling and grammar determine the words that are perceived, and in some stupidly simple cases, can change the whole sentence. 

"They're dogs. I went to they're dogs." 

Ouch, tar and feather me now, please. I believe that when our character was asked where he went, he intended to say, "Their dogs. I went to their dogs." If that's not the case, then he's clearly saying that some group is made up of a bunch of dogs. Either way, the nearby cluster of gossiping ladies threw him a dirty look, because that at least sounds like it has implications....

"I red the book."

Well how are you redding it? Please, do tell. I love adventure stories about people whose injuries lead to ruining a good story. 

Anyway, you hopefully get the idea by know, if you didn't already before.  And if you noticed, then please don't correct me; I was making my last point.