[TheSlyMoogle]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

The only flaw in that story is that I dont use horrible grammar. It may not be perfect, but this is just a messege board, not a English project. But still, despite that fact I still use mostly correct grammar. That doesnt mean I care about it.

I believe that the very best writers, the one with a REAL talent for writing, can write an awesome story or piece without knowing much grammar at all. Of course you will need to be taught a few things, like capitilizing the first letter of sentances, how to use "who" and "whom", and certain word usage. But for the most part, a talented writer understands language with some degree of just "knowing". The English language is so diverse and twisted that grammar is a pitiful attempt to apply rules to something that almost always has a loop hole. Do you need to know what a verb is to use one? Hell no. And I dont think that the really skilled writers need to be taught how to use comma's. They just know. Or at least they learn from experiance. If they write something and reread it, they can tell when certain comma's aren't needed or are needed.

Besides, what do authors have editors for? It's because being an author doesnt mean you have perfect mastery over the english language. It doesnt mean you understand every ounce of semantics. It means that you see the beauty in the language. You can see words, and you can see under them. You can look at a group of text and see the song that is under them. You can take letters and words and sentances, and weave them into a beautiful yarn with a beginning and a end and a million middles. You see the poetry potential in every word, every letter, and you can mold it. You can mold the language to tell whatever fascinating tale you please. Author's are story tellers, not semantic driven machines.

I wasn't saying you used horrible grammar, I was just using your name because you were the one who said grammar wasn't important. I was trying to show you it was. I believe no matter how good a story is, if it was written the way I wrote that little paragraph, no editor would even touch it. A book has to be grammatically correct enough to ensure readibility, or no one is going to want to even try to fix it.