>The major problem I find is the writers whose grip on the English
>language is so loose that they keep slipping between past and present
>tense. Writing in present tense is suspect enough, but is it really
>that hard to remember which you're writing in for as long as a single
>paragraph?

Is for me - even when I'm chatting on one of the MUCKs/MUSHes I'm on. I keep slipping between past/present tense and first/third perspective. MY SO has gotten so used to it that she doesn't even realize when I do it, these days.

Oddly, I don't really have that problem when writing fics - once in a while, I'll slip, but most of the time it's actually a typo - I hit the 'd' instead of the 's', etc.

>To be fair, there are a lot of wirters who are very good about the
>technical quality of their writing (and spellchecking anything with
>Japanese names in it is time-consuming at best), with maybe the odd
>persistent mistake. Like Skysaber's 'deliberate' use of Pheonix.
>(deliberate? yaright)

I try to be. It's why I keep looking for people I know to help proofread my stuff - I know I miss things, and my primary text editor lacks a spellcheck.

>drakensisthered
>
>So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally
>more than one side to a story." - Corwin, Roger Zelazny's 'Courts of
>Chaos'

-Khirsah the Deranged
"In the beginning there was the Word, and it was written by a <censored for national security reasons>."