While our group offers plenty of opinions and advice for authors, we don't have much in the way of advice for aspiring angry reviewers. I'm sure there are people with blood boiling under their skin, who just wish they could vent their frustration at stupid horsewords, but feel intimidated by our application process and feel like they don't know where to start.

We do have general guidelines and tips, which help, but I thought I'd try something more specific. Let's open a discussion on reviewing the most basic aspect of a story's construction: its compliance with the rules of the English language and its overall appearance. This thread is mostly aimed at those who'd like to get started reviewing, but if you're an experienced reviewer and would like to weigh in, feel free.

Grammar

First of all, if you want to review grammar, then you need to know grammar yourself.

It's beyond the scope of this post to teach grammar, but if you need help, check out this site's writing guide. It's a good place to start.

I think most people would assume this is an ironclad rule, but it's not. If you're not a native English speaker, or happen to not be very good at grammar for whatever reason, that can be fine if you're upfront about it. Acknowledge your limitation and simply focus on other aspects of the story. You can still point out obvious errors, but leave the fine details to others who know what they're talking about.

Grammar errors typically fall into two categories: systemic, and typos.

With systemic errors, the story consistently gets them wrong at every appearance. Common systemic errors include things like bad dialog punctuation, misspelled character names (Applebloom vs Apple Bloom), and frequent typos. If you see a systemic error, it's best to give one example, state that story consistently gets it wrong, and move on to other problems.

With typos, the story only makes that particular error once. Depending on how clean the story is, it can be worth pointing them out (especially if they're really bad), but don't dwell on them if they appear frequently. Consider them to be systemic, and just complain about the grammar in general terms. You can also point out errors in quoted material that you've included for other reasons, if you feel so inclined.

The best way to show grammar errors is to quote them.

'Why Ahm such a dumb pony that Ah dmb plum forgot how to punctuate dialog properly." Said Apple Jack.

When reviewing stories here, you'll see sentences like this one which contain multiple errors. It can be hard to list them them all, so in a case like this, a quote followed by a statement like 'bad grammar overall' can get your point across. Another trick is use FimFiction's formatting options to mark up the quoted material and highlight the errors specifically.

'"Why, Ahm Ah'm such a dumb pony that Ah dmb dumb plum forgot how to punctuate dialog properly.," Said Apple Jack said Applejack.

You don't have to be this colorful; re-quoting the passage with fixes can work too.

"Why, Ah'm such a dumb pony that Ah dumb plum forgot how to punctuate dialog properly," said Applejack.

It's also worth noting that Applejack would never say something like this. Don't get so caught up in the technical aspects that you miss out on the bigger picture.

You can use [sic] for minor errors.

If you happen across a story with fundamentally good grammar, then individual errors in quoted text will be quite rare. Adding [sic] to a passage shows that it was copied verbatim, including any errors contained within. While it'd be tiresome to toss in [sic] at the end of every quote in a badfic, it can be inserted after typos in a polished story to highlight them without having to mention them directly:

Twilight gently flapped the little wings sticking out of her her [sic] horn. They were no joke; there was no faking something like that! Beads of sweat dripped down her heaving flanks as her heart raced. Her disease was progressing far too quickly. What if her lungs grew wings next? ...or her heart? The light of her throne room suddenly became too intense, and her vision blurred. She felt cold and clammy and had to lie down, lest she faint. Alicorny cancer was a terrible, terrible thing.

Alicorny cancer... This story was doing great too, until it came up with that crappy name. If it wants us to feel bad for her, it should at least try to come up with something that doesn't sound like a joke!

Formatting

Formatting refers to the general appearance of a story.

How are the paragraphs structured? Are they too big? Do they stick to the one perspective, one idea rule? Are they spaced, indented, or both? Does the author use too much/many bold, italic, underline, all caps, resized text, colored text, asterisks, custom fonts, zalgo (vertical) text, hyperlinks, imbedded images, and/or YouTube videos? Are scene breaks inconsistently presented, omitted when necessary, contain info that should be in the narrative, or done well? You don't have to answer all these questions, but if the story just plain looks bad, then the formatting is to blame.

Quoting is the best way to highlight formatting errors.

Like grammar, poor formatting is best shown with an example or two.

"I *said*, muffins are NOT to be used as suppositories!"

Here, we have inconsistent methods used to emphasize certain words and asterisks are just plain bad in general. But, there could be more.

FimFiction's copy/paste function does not copy source formatting.

In most cases, you will have to edit your quote after you've copied it to preserve the source formatting. Fortunately, there's a toolbar above the text box, so all you have to do is highlight the text and click on the appropriate button to add the formatting.

"I *said*, muffins are NOT to be used as suppositories!"

Okay, I'm being a bit silly with this example, but as you can see, improperly done formatting can turn something into a mess. The main question to ask yourself when you see an author implementing formatting into the story is whether or not that worked and added to the experience, or didn't work and detracted from it.

If you can't duplicate the source formatting, cheat.

Sometimes, an author will drop things in the story that can't be copied in quotes due to FimFiction's restricted comment rules. For example, [left_insert]the left insert tag[/left_insert] doesn't work outside of story text, but if you want to show that in your review, you'll have to turn to images. Hit the 'print screen' button on your keyboard, open MS paint (or any other image editor), paste the image onto the canvas, select the appropriate area, crop the image to your selection, save the file, and upload it to an image hosting service such as imgur. This is also a good technique for inserting the story's cover page into your review.

Well this just got meta.

Authors, take note: the left and right insert tags are great tools for inserting footnotes.

Try to avoid quoting huge blocks of text just to show formatting.

If the story's a wall of text, then it's okay to just say that. You can back up your claim by adding a link directly to the story chapter. If you quote a large block of text that looks bad, then your review will also look bad simply for containing it. Do this sparingly and make sure you have a good reason for doing so.

Both

Grammar and formatting only scratch the surface of the story.

While errors can abound aplenty, and it can be fun to revel in them, be aware that they're just superficial. Focusing almost entirely on grammar and formatting will make your review appear shallow. (That review was written before we had official reviewers, so don't harp on it—it's a moot point anyway, since that story's been deleted).

Why is this shallow? Because grammar and formatting are the first thing one sees when one looks at a story. If you spend your whole review ranting about missing periods and miscapitalized names, then you've accomplished nothing because anyone can open the story and see the same thing for themselves in the first five seconds.

Limit yourself to a few paragraphs about grammar/formatting, then move on.

This isn't a hard rule by any means, but it can be a good guideline to start with. People expect you to read a story so they don't have to. Don't focus your attention on what the words look like, but rather on the meaning that they're trying to convey. A well rounded review will highlight multiple story aspects such as characterization issues, a basic plot summary, pacing, plot holes, narrative style, mood, etc.

Grammar and formatting are always in your face, screaming for attention, but once you've acknowledged them, feel free to focus on other issues.

When you rant about grammar, rant about grammar!

This is Rage Reviews, not Lemon-Scented Moist Towelette Reviews. If there's something worth getting upset about, then don't be afraid to show your anger.

Low rage:

The grammar and formatting are somewhat lackluster and this story could benefit from an editor.

High rage:

By the swollen, bloody, pulsating pulps that used to be my precious eyeballs, IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR FOR AN OCCASIONAL PERIOD!? Commas were NOT meant to be used for everything! I could inject Ebola directly into my eyes and they'd bleed less than they did after reading this shit! This fanfic should be banned by OSHA! It's that bad!

This is more or less the exact opposite of the advice Obselescence wrote in his blog, How to be a Better Critic. However, our target audience is not the story's author, but rather the general public. Thus, we have an obligation to make our reviews entertaining.

Always back up sweeping claims with concrete examples.

A caveat to the above. Don't get so caught up in ranting that you forget to justify your reaction. We want a review, and not a rant. If you can't justify your reaction, then chances are that you've overreacted and should tone down your language.

Always edit your review before posting it.

You can't harp on grammar and formatting if your review itself contains numerous obvious errors. Nobody expects every post you make to be perfect, but you'll sound like a hypocrite if you don't put any effort into your own work. Most errors can be caught by reading through what you've written. A spellchecker can be a big help too, but you'll have to be extra careful when using one because you don't want to accidentally edit quoted material.

Conclusion

To summarize, my recommended strategy for reviewing the technical aspects of a story is this:

1. See it.

2. Show it.

3. Shoot it.

4. Bury it.

Here's an example from a different review:

Onward into the first chapter: The Ice Staff.

...what the fuck kind of formatting do you have going on here? First off, a lot lines are clumped together with it seeming random which times he will double space and which times he won't. Also, the ones that are clumped together alternate between being indented and not being indented. You know what would be a better way for the ready to easily separate the lines and keep track of what's going on? Put a fucking space between them.

"Twilight! Twilight! Oh, where is she?" Spike asks, worried and a hint of afraid in there.

"What Spike? I'm a bit busy right now."

"It's just that, it's snowing outside. It's the middle of summer."

"What? That can't be. Unless Rainbow Dash is pulling a prank."

"Well, no, it's just too much clouds. I think a blizzard is coming. I don't know."

"That is just, let me see." Twilight said concerned as if spike is hallucinating.

"Okay. I'm telling you, it's crazy."

There's a lot going wrong already with the grammar: afraid in there, messed up dialogue tags, commas how do they work, not capitalizing the right stuff, etc. But, I'll be working on this all day if I pointed out all the grammar issues. I'll just say that the grammar in this story sucks and move on.

This review fails at preserving the source formatting (tab character—why won't it copy!? ), and needs a solid proofreading of its own, but it still manages to get its point across. By the way, if you do edit quoted material for clarity or other reasons, please inform us. Otherwise, we'll assume the story itself is like that which is misleading.

With one final thought, I'd like to say that the grammar and formatting of a story might be a steaming pile of shit, but if you stop, drop, and roll around in it, your review will start to smell like that too.

Hopefully, this was at least somewhat helpful. Best of luck if you do plan to start reviewing.