What is the single prose mistake you despise the most?

When abused, it truly looks awful, I agree.

FRIEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

Putting greater than symbols in front of terse often incomplete sentences.

unnecessary descriptions and deperate attempts to be "deep"

Yeah. William Gass uses them particularly well and often, though, this post made me realize.

I dunno man, books be so wordy sometimes.

purple prose generally

Why does Frieza have sideburns?

Adverbs.

>Unnecessary, comas
I see what you did there.

Also, people who can't spell the word "comma."

Gass also uses about 20 similes per page, and its fucking irksome.

freezer-burns XD

Okay, that was pretty good.

Fun.

This wouldn't look half as gay without the beard.

I was massively turned off The Handmaid's Tale because of this

adding "matter of fact" or "truth be told" to the end of every other line

Edit: Wow, thanks for the gold!

cmon, man

I like this post very very very very very very much

I find that people nowadays don't use enough commas in their work. Clauses need to be broken up.

What's wrong with adverbs?

Fuck, you're right.

Unnecessary similes. It's what keeps me from really loving Murakami.
>It was soft, like a [soft thing]
The adjective is enough.

Abuse of overwrought metaphors

Aye Socrates u alive?

Girl spotted. Show tits.

They're alright in moderation. Otherwise they're tasteless and overbearing, not allowing the rest of the sentence to bear the weight. Too much is too much, that's why showing is better than telling. Adverbs tend to be very inorganic.

nigga just say david foster wallace

it's called an "angle bracket", brainlet.

This is more dialogue but I hate when characters get cut off. Like

"John do you have any-
"Peanuts? Yes I do have peanuts, thanks for asking"

In real life cut offs are never that clean or neat. It just doesnt translate well in text

t.Hemingway

How about this

"John, do you, uhm, have any-
"Peanuts? Yes, just reach up my ass

Periphrasis
I don't mean verbiage, I mean, you see this example here, not when you use many words, not really tautology either, what is it? Like politicians or bureaucrats, they talk and write just about sort of like this way. Like when shitty teachers teach in rhetorical questions cause they don't know the answer, fucking postmodernist not having a right answer, it's all subjective, what is beauty anyway? "What do you think beauty is?" Said the teacher looking at Gregory. Gregory didn't know.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
edit find 3E

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket#Angle_brackets

"Chevrons ⟨ ⟩, similar to the commonly used less-than ()"

>you underestimated my power level

Seconding this one, specially when an author uses them coupled with adjectives to describe something instead of ACTUALLY describing said thing.

"He was a very tall man with several small trinkets on his cape"

HOW tall is "very tall"? How many is several? How small? It's so frustrating reading texts constructed on this manner.

ulillillia, is you?

>ulillillia
Who?

I get it but I'm still an adverb whore and think it should be normalized

the greatest prose stylist alive you dumb pseud

Go to bed. Try again tomorrow

English is by nature a little separate from literal reality so it's weird to pick and choose here as a delimiter.

I think your example is very grand. It looks exorbitantly well in prose. To me, a fine mark of English literature

But your example, while definitely good advice, doesn't use any adverbs. I often see the opposite problem, adverb underuse. Why say "he moved in a quiet way" (I have actually seen this) when you can say "he moved QUIETLY"?
I agree, however, that they too have a limit. Too much is too much.

"John do you have any-", mouth and tongue still preparing the final word of the sentence before his eager friend interjected.

"Peanuts? Yes I do have peanuts, thanks for asking."

Wouldn't the issue be rhythm (ie why not use 'He moved in a quiet sort of way')

I guess it depends on how they are used as well, quietly means in a quiet manner, it's hard to get that wrong, but more subjective ones like "wonderfully"? Even the base word "wonderful" has gotten on my bad list because I've seen far too many sentences where it's misused.

My example if it were part of an actual prose it would be terrible because it doesn't detail important information. Adjectives like tall, small and many are subjective, they might be used to pass someone's opinion but they are not useful to describe something.

This, this, this.

What are you doing on Veeky Forums If you read books with enough adverbs to piss you off?

>In real life cut offs are never that clean or neat.
Yeah, they are. Depends on the setting and people though, obviously.

Now that shit would be annoying unless it's very, very, very fucking rare or serves a better purpose than pure interruption.

It's describing what any subjective word does, honestly what any story does, a viewpoint. You're not reading a thesis, you're reading a colorful novel

I'm reading it now and the commas are distracting. I've also seen the same thing in translated Italian lit for some reason. Shit's weird- surely it's a straight-up grammatical error, not a defensible stylistic choice?

>a viewpoint
Depends on the narrator, it's a first person narrator it's doable because you ARE reading a story through's someone point of view, but if it's a 3rd person narrator than it's absolutely inexcusable. Even on the first case you have to be careful, the reader needs to get some part of impartiality and real information through the character's narrative.

>What are you doing on Veeky Forums If you read books with enough adverbs to piss you off?
It's usually plebby shit like genre and peer review.

>HOW tall is "very tall"?
Enough to strike the narrator as "very tall". Does his height really matter beyond transferring the feeling, that the narrator saw a tall person?
If you'd give a number, it'd be about the reader to decide whether it's tall or not, which is not the point most of the time.

>How many is several?
A number that is too big to tell with one gaze, which again depends on the person seeing it and can tell you about the character. Some over analytical person would name the number.

>How small?
Fair point but it rarely matters enough to waste sentences on it.

>Enough to strike the narrator as "very tall".
Doesn't convey any information besides passing someone's opinion which for many genres it holds little value.
>Does his height really matter beyond transferring the feeling, that the narrator saw a tall person?
Yes because if the narrator is a 5 ft person anything from 6 to 7 ft may be considered "very tall".
>If you'd give a number, it'd be about the reader to decide whether it's tall or not, which is not the point most of the time.
>not the point
It is if you are describing something, sans very romanticized books there's no point of describing something if you are not going to pass any information to the reader. In many cases it ends up looking like you're just a lazy or unimaginative writer.
>which again depends on the person seeing it and can tell you about the character.
Only if you have a frame of reference so you can compare reality with the character's opinion of it.
>it rarely matters enough to waste sentences on it
A trinket the size of a teeth can be easily swallowed, a trinket the size of strawberry can not.

Giving this kind of information during the description is useful to play with the reader's expectations and set the tone for a situation without explicitly saying it.

Even a third person narrative it is assumed all information can only be understood subjectively. I understand if you think of the narrator as being a god of some sort but that viewpoint goes away when you read books like Alice in Wonderland. Third person but the acceptance of it being absurd human perspective is obvious

>there's no point of describing something if you are not going to pass any information to the reader.
Subjective descriptions do that, just not direct information but how the POV character perceives the world around him/her, which seems more relevant than giving the reader 1-1description. If some manlet considers 5'9 as very tall, you do get a better picture of the situation and their feelings than the heigh alone would convey.

It does often happen because the writer is unimaginative and lazy but just with everything else it's about the execution and not the method itself IMO.

>Only if you have a frame of reference so you can compare reality with the character's opinion of it.
True, that's important to make it work, although a very subjective account from one person can do too. Depends too much on what the work wants to achieve.

>Giving this kind of information during the description is useful to play with the reader's expectations and set the tone for a situation without explicitly saying it.
True again but at times it can be too much. Sometimes it's enough to give the imagination of the reader the very basics to continue.

Alice is a weird example, it's mostly from her POV but there is also a more objective narrator that sometimes butts in. Writing instructors would bitch about it these days.

>The road to hell is paved with adverbs
>666
what the fuck

Alice is entirely third person, it's just so absurd it makes you think it's first person because it must be subjective.

I was just using to illustrate a point

It is third person but it jumps from normal subjective 3rd person to bits that are from omniscient 3rd person.

The third person narrative is still subjective, by the way. It is by where the focus is at throughout the novel. A purely, and theoretically, objective novel wouldn't focus on one spot at all. It would tell all sides and everything about the universe at once.

If you don't understand read

You're mushing two words up. There's only one type of third person

Invisible style

passive voice

Your first sentence.

Why are you bothered by this?

I too hate it when I slip into a coma unnecessarily.