Misspellings, punctuation mistakes, and malapropisms make me twitch, but I don’t actually stop reading the entire work unless the mistakes are numerous enough to confuse the narrative.

Yes, absolutely. I’ll forgive a few errors, especially in a blog or other source that isn’t formally published. But if something is *rife* with errors, then that tells me that the writer is not a frequent reader, and I don’t believe you can be a good writer unless you read.

Well, now I’m much older and wish I’d paid more attention. .

Yes, bad grammer and spelling will eventually force me to put the novel down. No matter how engaging the story. If the lack of basic writing skills pulls me out of the story, there’s no point in finishing the novel. I’ll be too distracted by the structural errors to be fully entertained.

…….dhole

Having said that, there is much to like about the corrupted dialect used on your side of the pond, as it often has a conciseness, even a wit, that cannot be achieved in the mother tongue.

To take issue that an audience that does not know the meaning of the word “vermilion,” seems a little like shooting yourself in the foot. (I confess I just looked the word up in the dictionary). But to make an issue of the understanding of one word, is to make an issue of the understanding of every single word. Does anybody have a vocabulary that is absolutely faultless? As I have seen lexicographers looking up words in dictionaries, I think not.
The art with obscure words, (including ones that shouldn’t really be obscure) is to phrase sentences in which they are used, so they are self-explanatory.

I was not blessed with the best of educations, and even using a spell-check sometimes the odd incorrect spelling can creep through because a wrong spelling of a word can often produce another alike word. For instance, the words anal & anile; which are often confused in conversation; will slip by a spell-check when one is intended and the other actually written.
Grammar is another weak point with me, but I have a couple of text books on the subject, and I try to improve myself with its disciplines. The problem I encounter with this is; for every rule of grammar there seems to be between fifty and twenty thousand exceptions; so I don’t suppose I’ll ever achieve perfection.

I can understand an agent’s frustration at receiving a manuscript with poor spelling and grammar and I wonder how many are dismissed for not being up to standard, or rather how high the set standard is for it not to be dismissed without reading. The point is made that books with incredible flaws jump to the top of the Amazon list. Could this be because they are good stories? Is the traditional publishing format, now so concerned with correctness that the worth of a cracking, good yarn is lost?
Yes presentation in spelling and grammar is important, but so is imagination and the ability to craft a plot. For every poorly written book self-published on Amazon there are at least fifty well written ones in the bookstore that are dull uninspired pap.
How many old time authors would have been lost to us if, back in the day, they were not paired with an editor who would make the work properly readable? Agatha Christie for instance, was a notoriously bad speller and I doubt very much that she would be published if she were writing today.

For me? I do have to see basic mechanics of grammar at work to enjoy writing–if not, I see the writer, not the story. When there are grammatical errors, it pulls me out of the story and makes me want to grab a red pen. But–that’s me, and I own up to being anal.

From what I’ve been reading in various forums, a lot of people can – and do. The refrain “I want to read a good story; I don’t care about spelling or grammar” has become a loud and very vocal chorus among readers these days. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if a book could be written in textspeak, pig Latin or “ESL” and still draw a huge audience.

I believe that it can. When self-pubbed books with incredible flaws jump to the top of the list on Amazon, this sends a clear message that poor writing isn’t endemic to today’s writers; it affects readership, too.

Writing is my livelihood. Because not many people can, I have a lot of job security. Moreover, my job is to write at no more than an eighth-grade reading comprehension level – in some cases, sixth. All of those arcane vocabulary words in my head and complex, lyrical sentences I learned to construct at university are of no use to me if my audience doesn’t know the meaning of “vermilion.”