“You yourself read the kind of stories once in your lifetime that you now criticise.”
Jan 5
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12305811/
Thank you for the review. I always capitalize Pokemon names because they are just that. The names of the Pokemon. To each their own, this is just for fun after all.
Yes, I do realize this. But mega stones do bring out a lot of power in a Pokemon. Therefore, my reasoning. After all, it’s not going to be a mega stone after all. And you are right in that sense. I will keep this in mind for further chapters. I can probably incorporate something along those lines. I’m not about to delete and retype this currently. Too busy with work XD
But thank you for the constructive criticism. I do appreciate it.
Jan 6
Hi,
I will like to first, thank you for taking your time out to leave a feedback on my story Perfect Epitome. I am very grateful that you pointed out my sentence structuring/grammatical mistakes and gave me your honest views on the storyline. After going back and objectively reading through the story again, I understand how those scenes are awful. I am actually quite embarrassed especially since I do read and complain about those horrible shoujo mangas.
Naturally, I took the story down and will be making major revisions. I will still be sticking to the general idea of the other girls teasing May about her ‘rivalry’ with Drew, with majority of the scenes changed. Hopefully, it will flow better and be a more enjoyable read. If you were a reader of School Status and was absolutely disgusted and disappointed with this story (that was suppose to be some sort of a sequel), I sincerely apologise.
Lastly, I apologise for taking a while to reply your review as I was feeling pretty shocked, regretful and disappointed in myself. Thank you so much for reading this and I hope you will have a great day ahead :)
Sincerely,
Amelia
Jan 6
Wow! Thanks I guess?
I’m not trying to be perfectly correct in the way I write my stories, I’m just trying have fun, and share said fun with other people! :)
Thank you for your critical analysis anyway :?
Have a great day!
I would love to hear you opinion on the actual story and not the typing however! :DYoir*Oops darn phone keyboards, your**People just never take the hint.
Jan 6
Schmacklar
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12307234/
Thanks for the review!
I’m just used to capitalization on words like pokémon and the names of them, but I’ll keep that in mind.
I’ll work on the problems you mentioned. I wrote the story at night when I got a sudden rush of ideas, and I wanted to write them down because I didn’t want to forget about it overnight. When I woke up really early to work on it before school, I fixed a few issues but I didn’t notice the ones you pointed out.
As for the repetitiveness, I don’t fully remember why I wrote it that way. To be honest, it sounded way better in my head. I’m usually very against repetitive vocabulary, but I guess my slightly sleepy self is an exception. I wanted to keep a common theme with those two paragraphs. Since it doesn’t work, I’ll be changing it.
Actually, just forget the above two paragraphs of me trying to explain myself. They probably weren’t even good reasons, anyway.
I said “sort of” because at the time, I didn’t know the exact definition of a drabble. One definition says that a drabble can’t be longer than a hundred words, while another says that it can be any length. If you know the exact definition of a drabble that is widely accepted, please inform me.
Again, your input was appreciated, even though it’s a teeny bit picky. This is the first helpful review I’ve ever gotten, as the others I got honestly weren’t that useful. One of the main reasons I started publishing stories on this sight was to learn how I could improve my writing.
Jan 6
Jan 6After some research, I now know that Spectrum is actually a ficlet. Drabbles are apparently exactly 100 words in length.It was confusing for me personally because I’ve read stories of varying length where the author calls it a drabble. One search of “drabble” in the search bar brings up tons of stories that do not all follow the rules of a drabble, ranging from ones with slightly more than 100 (though that’s probably just the ANs) to a few thousand.
Jan 6TheSignOfLibra
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12307361/
Thanks for the review, I prefer suggestions, and to answer the whole whether the term ‘Pokemon’ should be capitalized, I believe it should be, because of how it is in the games currently. And we’ve been doing it for so long and there really isn’t too much of a problem with it, so why create one? That’s just my opinion and I’m not trying to start an argument, so just please respect it.
And yes, I agree it is a bit sad, but that’s why this is rated T.
“Convoluted” does not mean “sad”.Wrong word. Whoops… *embarassed look on face*Jan 6
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12307723/
“You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.”
Huh, everyone I came across just call them with a capital. Heck, even Bulbapedia refer to Pikachu with a capital every time it is mentioned, despite being Ash’s or otherwise, same goes for pretty much every other article on the site, for that matter. I’d probably just call what you are saying a personal preference.
“That really doesn’t make sense. Jynx are a weird, uncanny valley pokemon, but if it’s an illusion, they should have no issue tweaking the illusion until it looks more like real dresses (for that matter, no issue changing the rest of their appearance) and they wouldn’t all look alike. And it’s especially ridiculous to say that the fake illusion dress that is not, in fact, there needs to be removed to take a bath.”
I myself was a bit iffy on if it sounded right or not. My effective Beta Reader said it was fine. My main point is trying to make the world less “Hey, look at this! We’re not giving you an explanation so just take it and like it!”, a similar case is visible in my other fic that is uploaded, saying that Devee had squinted eyes due to living in deserts/wastelands, and had adapted it to keep dust and sand out of their eyes, as well as the feet being like they are due to being descended from bats, because I doubt bats had human feet. If they had evolved the way they already had, then they would still have more batlike qualities on their limbs, because if they hadn’t lost their large ears and sharp teeth, then their feet wouldn’t be fully humanoid. There was a slight mistake in the foot description, I meant to say four instead of two toes. That explanation is less far-fetched, but it is another example. I might just delete the Jynx description, as I do not know how to properly fix it.
“Also you really have to stop flipflopping on genders.”
How was saying ‘it’ flipping its gender? Jynx is a 100% female species, I’d understand if I had said ‘he’, but referring to it as ‘it’ doesn’t really say anything that’s truly wrong.
“…or by just trading for one. You’re making this a lot more complicated than it has to be, and you’re assuming trading is extremely hard for some reason, and the reasoning gengar can’t be caught wild is circular – if anyone abandons gengar, then they can be caught in the wild, at which point the reason you give for it being a dumb idea to abandon them doesn’t apply and more people would abandon them. And besides, if a trainer doesn’t want a pokemon the only other thing they can do is trade but a gengar isn’t worth any more than a haunter as far as trading goes.”
If someone releases a Gengar, I wouldn’t expect them to be very common regardless. As they are generally rare Pokemon, some trainers would definitely trick younger and more gullible trainers into giving up their trade evolutions for something like a Pidgey. I’m not saying all trading is like this, if people are trading for mutual benefit, then it is easy.
“Really, the many and varied ice types all use the same method? A sneasel has built-in ice picks on its feet, why not use those?”
I meant that Sneasels have that adaptation, should probably make that more apparent. As for not using their claws, they certainly help, but say they had to cross a frozen river, which doesn’t seem like much of a stretch considering they live up on Mount Silver in the Johto Region, which is shown to be below cloud level due to the hail, and would experience rain as well as below 0 degrees Celsius in temperature. They would not exactly want to hack their claws into a thin sheet of ice and risk cracking it.
“Write out numbers with letters.”
….What difference would that make, other than fixing your small complaint?
“Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.”
When did my Year 10 English teacher get a Fanfiction account? That was meant to be a joke, by the way. There’s no full way I can keep to that unless you really want to be my new Beta Reader, you can look through it and fix it, however don’t fuck with the capitals of names. That’s just your little preference, basically all other fanfics I have read do not refer to them as ‘totodile’ instead of ‘Totodile’.
“…as opposed to most sneasel, which are such durable tanks?”
Should add “even in comparison to other Sneasel”.
“Seriously, trying to stick to game mechanics is not a good idea, and doing to inconsistently is even worse – most legendaries in the area aren’t even that high of a level, so a maxed pokemon is more likely to curbstomp them than “compete”.”
Boy, you would have hated the original version. I knew someone was gonna get pissed off with that.
“Gligar have a double weakness. Why doesn’t the sneasel fight back?”
At the time that part was written, I viewed her as only knowing Scratch, Leer and Quick Attack. Merely an accidental slip-up.
Overall, thanks for the criticism, but you could have at least said what I did well despite the issues.
Jan 6devilnightking100
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12307762/
I admit I should have capitalized the Pikachu, but the whole She said was because my stupid kindle doesn’t like when I use lower case letters after a period, even if someone is talking. as for the sentence breaks, sorry, but that’s just my style. If you don’t like, don’t read. Thank you for your opinion, and I’ll be sure to at least apply some of these. Also, sorry if I come across as rude, manners aren’t my strongest point
Jan 7Vulthurin
I’ll be honest. I wrote this when I was drunk one night. I think the premise was supposed to be a laughable situation for the end of humanity, but then do an adventure based off of that.
Jan 7
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12309062/
Thanks for the review! I was really surprised when it was you who reviewed. I looked at the points you made and yeah I’ll try to rewrite this. Besides that, are there any other thing that bothered you?
Also, I’d like to thank you for the writing guide and fanfic guide you made. The grammar guide was really helpful, while I’m still reading your fanfic guide.
Jan 7
I am young. I write for myself. The Pokemon anime is popular despite its childishness. Kids don’t like to hear about science about fictional stuff. When I try to write gory super-realistic Game-of-Champions style stories, nobody reads them. I was trying to follow the format of some story I read which operates much like a TV show when I wrote the first chapter.
Thanks for your ‘constructive criticism’.
Jan 7
Sidenote: No cursing back. I know how to use abusive words too.
Thank you.
Jan 7
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12308517/
Thank you for taking the time to review.
Hm, Pokémon species aren’t capitalized? I thought I’d generally seen them capitalized in other media but that might have to do more with trademark recognition or something. I’ll admit I did debate for a good minute about whether or not to employ capitalization when referring to species names because it felt grammatically awkward as you pointed out, but I thought it was standard practice. (I.e. A wild Jigglypuff appeared!)
Decided not to name them for personal stylistic reasons. I have a pet peeve about naming Pokémon. I don’t plan on having more than one Pokémon of a given species having dialogue or really acting. If there comes a time that I do, I’ll distinguish it.
Basically the older Pokémon didn’t want the offspring to roam too far from the nest ultimately trying to find new evolutions. Flareon attempts to dissuade Eevee from doing so but really just changes her mind because she thinks it’s a silly tradition.
Anyway, thank you for taking the time to comment. Hope you have a happy new year! :)
Jan 7
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12310926/
Wow is this a taste of my own medicine. I used to write reviews like this all the time in high school! Ended up discouraging people and made a few quit writing. Guess how it feels when you meet a victim in person years later? Horror, utter horror, and you will never forgive yourself. Me, I’m hurt of course, but I have been in your position and know where you are coming from. However, this review contains no constructive criticism. Constructive criticism means you point out the good with the bad, where is the good in this review? That being said, I appreciate you taking the time to write out your opinion clearly. I know reviews like this take a long time. You also showed you read the whole thing through which is more than some reviewers do! I suggest studying childhood-onset and paranoid schizophrenia before making blanket statements about shoulds and coulds, and consider emphasized details like shiny Pokemon as potential foreshadowing. Thanks for your time!
( By the by, THAT is constructive criticism.)
This sounds like they did actual research but doing the research it looks they just took Hollywood schizophrenia symptoms and called it a day. Possibly they mean their five second google search said it’s possible for children to have the disorder and they figured they knew the rest.
Jan 7
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12311222/
I think I remember seeing a review of yours before? I’m not sure, and it’d honestly be a hassle to check, but either way thank you for taking the time to review. Let me see now…
First point: I know of the conundrum with this in the fandom and I do understand your points on WHY it should be done, but in this case the Pokemon material is “Word of god.” We may not capitalise “mouse” or “dragon” in grammatically-correct English, but Pokemon has its own set of rules, and as I’m writing under said rules that they’ve established, I’m writing as they were established. It’s not as if I’m publishing this fan-fiction. ps Not myself, nor any person I’ve ever met, has ever been turned off from a story, good or bad or otherwise, because of the capitalisation.
Second point: Not necessarily “beat.” Verbal reprimanding counts too, which is what he was referring to.
Third point: My fault. It’s a monkey see/monkey do habit at this point.
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12309711/
Oh, ok. Thanks for that, I actually didn’t know that. I’ll try to start doing that in my stories from now on.
Jan 7FanFliction
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12311139/
A little bit :P
Jan 7
I always look forward to hearing people’s voices, and your voice was very loud to me. I was obviously not very happy to get that review, but I can get over it. You are right about some of what you said. I know that I have a lot of skills to improve.
I want to be clear though that writing is not a career goal for me. I am interested in other things that have nothing to do with Pokemon or fanfiction in general. I can handle reviews like this, but please, be careful about what you say on the web. So many of us use the internet as an escape. We talk to others because sometimes we just want to rant to a stranger, even if the friends in our personal lives are plentiful. Some writers write for therapy, or to practice skills, or to express an idea. Please don’t discourage young writers from taking a chance and writing something.
if a painter paints something that you do not like, listing all the things they did wrong in a condescending manner will not help them improve their art. We all have limits, and not everyone can be a perfect writer or artist. And I consider writing to be an art.
Many of us write the way we talk, and there is not a problem with that, especially when it comes to dialogue.
we all have opinions, but opinions aren’t facts. Besides, fanfiction isn’t all about facts.
and finally:
Language is for us, we are not for language. Language changes and develops. If you send a text message, you can call it a ‘text’ or a ‘txt’ and the chances are everyone with whom you are communicating will understand. that is the point of language.
fanfiction is just for fun. I genuinely enjoy what I am doing, mistakes and all, so I beg you to not tell younger writers that what they are doing is wrong.
I am assuming you are older than me, since I was very young back in 2001. Please remember that many of the people on this site are young, middle school, high school, we are inexperienced, unprofessional, and some of us have learning disabilities. Please understand that and be nicer when you speak. I do not want negativity to enter my realm, so please, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.
Jan 8Someoneplzkillme
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12309456/
Thank you so much for the advice! I’m not very good at punctuation and grammar so thank you for the tips. I’ll be sure to use that in future writing.
Jan 8TimeLordMaster108
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12311773/
Look I need to give you some advice, if your going to criticise my story or any other story then try and find an actual fault in the story instead of nitpicking and complaining about minor things like Grammer, I mean are you serious I haven’t spelt any Pokemon names wrong I’m a massive fan so I think I know how to spell the names of the characters and by the way which ones did I get wrong, oh and speaking of which your suposed to capitalise the first letter of a characters name whenever spelling it out every Pokemon fanfic or every fanfic I’ve read does this, and lastly it’s just fanfiction I’m only writting these stories for fun as is every other great fanfic authur, we don’t care if we have minor grammer errors and we’re not going to change them just because some troll tells us to now if someone wrote a story where every word is wrong and it’s just a massive wall of text then I’d have a problem and plus we’re not trying to publicly publishe this stuff and remember it’s just true fans having fun.
12m ago
Really? Last I checked, gligar evolves into gliscor and geodude to graveler. Huh. Guess you’re as big a fan of that as you are of “Grammer”.
[if someone wrote a story where every word is wrong ]
That’s pretty much what you have here, yes.
Ok that’s two names wrong but come on it’s just a small error and everyone makes mistakes, your just one of those horrible critics trying to pretend that you’re smarter than everyone else and trying to make people feel dumb, so how about you give me actual critical analasys instead of whining over the spelling of Pokemon who are fictional characters, and that last part your just twisting I said every authur even the best ones can make mistakes and not every word is wrong.Ps if you respond again I will block you since I have better things to do than deal with immature critics.
Jan 8TimeLordMaster108
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12311773/
Ps also that trade evolution scene is not boaring and is a very important part of the Poke Wars universe, if you’ve read the series then you’ll know that Tracey’s Scyther becomes a Scizor and that Brock’s Gravaler becomes a Golem so I have to show them trading because it shows the characters changing now if I just had filler where nothing important happens then we’d have a problem.
19m ago
Imagine you read a story where Tracey and Brock already had the evolved forms. Would you be too stupid to work out that they traded at some point to make that happen? Then why do you think all your readers are such complete idiots they do need that explained?
I don’t think my readers are complete idiots I mean I didn’t create the Poke Wars series and I was how Tracey’s Scizor evolved from Scyther and how Brock’s Graveler evolved into Golem, I simply wannted to show what led to them to evolving not how they evolve and I’m sure pretty much every Pokemon fan knows that those two Pokemon only evolve by trade you’d have to be an idiot not to know that, so in conclusion I’m not treating my readers like a bunch of idiots I’m simply writting a one shot which is a spin off to a larger series another authur wrote where Tracey’s Scyther is now a Scizor and Brock’s Graveler is now a Golem, and one part of the one shot shows what led up to the trade Evoloution and who traded with who.Jan 8AJRinxooacj
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12308540/
Thank you very much for your review. I can’t believe I actually received one and my very first.
Thank you for pointing out my errors in writing this. As the story is completely a rough draft, I imagine many of those will occur. The main goal of this story was to produce a work by just writing it as it came rather than torturing myself with revision from the beginning as I’ve done with many stories in the past and had nothing come to fruition because of it. If you continue to read this, I ask that you please bear with me as there may be more to come in the future, all of which would be unintentional.
As for the capitalization issue, that’s partly something I use to relate it to the game and how I’ve seen it. I can’t recall ever having seen words such as pikachu or charizard or pokemon being anything other than capitalized, although I should change the capitalization of trainer and professor and I’ll be careful to watch for that in the future. I’ll be posting the second part momentarily and hope that I haven’t made the same mistake twice. I don’t think I did.
“How exactly does the defense that actually, it’s about producing a stronger relationship with pokemon! work when apparently all pokemon but one dying is the best result they’ve gotten in “many years”? You can’t have any kind a relationship with a pokemon once they’re dead.”
This is actually one of the main issues that will be addressed and possibly reoccur throughout the story as I believe it to be an important plot point. Your view towards Lance’s defense of the Nuzlocke Division will not be unlike many other pokemon trainers and I think that’s a wonderful part of how this world I’m making is set up and something the characters may have to deal with.
Though it may seem irrelevant, I am not aiming for a darker version of the world of pokemon with this story. The idea of making the Nuzlocke challenge a legitimate thing in that world has been an idea I’ve played around with for a long time as well as many other aspects you’ll see throughout the story. I hope you’ll come to enjoy them and continue reading until the end.
secs ago
But my view toward it is that it’s unspeakably stupid. If that’s how other people think, then how could Lance’s words possibly be what convinces people to keep it? That’s like saying people chugging salt shakers as a test of endurance keep dying but someone defended it by saying actually the point of chugging salt shakers is so the people doing it stay healthy and don’t die, which convinced everyone it was a good idea for people to keep chugging salt shakers, and this isn’t a plot hole because most people agree it’s unspeakably stupid to think chugging salt shakers prevents death.
If you’re writing a fic, your job is to make it sound plausible, not take something implausible (getting your well trained pokemon team killed off so you have nothing to show for your effort) and tie it to something that makes even less sense (because getting them killed means friendship!)
I wonder if there’s some way to make this my general metaphor for all nuzlockes. I feel like people get caught up in the grimdark of killing pokemon that they don’t seem to grasp that from a completely selfish, sociopathic, grimdark standpoint it’s still not a good idea.
There’s more but I’m bored of formatting everything.
We all know what he did in his life.
Is the author implying he stole his fic from a Croatian man?
You have white text in many boxes, first paragraphs generally.
I continue to be perplexed by people’s hostility towards pointing out grammar mistakes. Yes, everyone makes them. That’s why you shouldn’t feel bad that you have some and someone pointed them out. They’re easy to fix, too, when you know they’re here, so what’s even the problem?
Also, the whole “I’m writing for fun” defense. If you’re comfortable with your level of writing and don’t want to improve, that’s fine. Fanfiction is a hobby, nobody can force you to put more effort into it than you want. However, that means that your stories are going to have flaws that other people would see, and since fics are posted on a public site with a review function, some of those people would point out said flaws. That’s just how this whole thing works.
If you know your story is far from ideal, then what’s even a problem with people pointing out it has flaws? If you don’t want to improve, just ignore such reviews.
Back when I dropped out of English Ed. in a ball of blind fury, not only was grammar not being taught, but kids were being told errors were no big deal. If that’s still going on, it could be a factor in why people get so indignant about those corrections — it feels like pointless nitpicking.
It’s really bad because like, many professional fields are not going to cut you slack for that, and unless you’re important enough to have an editor all your own, you’re going to damage your own credibility with those little errors.
You have this really weird disconnect where it’s treated as a pointless hassle when it’s being taught, and then treated as a bare minimum necessity when it actually counts.
The absurd thing is that the same damn people turn around and wonder why college kids are entering the workforce illiterate.
I think it depends on which schools you attend. By the time you get to high school where I am in California, English teachers are supposed to be teaching critical thinking and how to write arguments, construct cohesive papers, do research papers, analyze poems etc. But that was assuming that grammar was already taught during middle school. I came from a magnet school that focused on academics, but I had a kid in my class freshman year who literally did not speak English. I’d say maybe a quarter of my class had a good grasp of grammar, and that’s ignoring edge cases and dialogue formatting. My school motto was basically “leave no one behind” so we spent a lot of time playing catch up, but almost everybody who didn’t drop out had good grammar by senior year. I shudder to think of what would happen to my classmates if they had gone from a middle school that didn’t care on to an apathetic high school. That’s where I think the “good enough” mindset comes from.
If you know your story is far from ideal, then what’s even a problem with people pointing out it has flaws? If you don’t want to improve, just ignore such reviews.
“When did my Year 10 English teacher get a Fanfiction account? That was meant to be a joke, by the way. There’s no full way I can keep to that unless you really want to be my new Beta Reader,”
…I don’t think much of their Year 10 English teacher, or previous ones, because those teachers should’ve drilled proper dialogue punctuation into them so that sticking to the rules is habit. Plus there’s always being your own editor and reading over what you wrote to see what looks wrong and fixing it, though that does depend on knowing what right and wrong are.
When I was in high school we basically only covered grammer rules for two class periods and the teachers expeted you to just know it all from one day of covering it and a second day of being tested on it. It wasn’t until college that any of my teachers went over grammer rules for longer than that. Otherwise it was just reading and analyzing literature.
In other words, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these fic writers actually don’t have a good grasp on grammer rules. I don’t know if education has been that awful elsewhere or if my school experience was the oddball one, though.
Nah, I don’t think it’s just your school. My grammer lessons were a bit better than that, but not by much. I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn about comma splices, for example, until late high school or maybe even college.
I think this may be due to the way English is taught to most native speakers. In English classes in secondary school, it’s usually assumed that the students already have a good grasp of grammar and the emphasis, in my experience, tends to be more on literary analysis and such. Naturally, this leaves many students with gaps in the knowledge, depending on how well they were taught in primary. (Curiously enough, this may be why many non-native speakers of English tend to have a better grasp of grammar than a lot of native speakers — grammar is emphasised far more heavily in classes aimed at people whose second or third language is English. Of course, that may be due to English grammar being fairly simple; if you’re used to, say, German or Czech or other languages with fairly rigorous grammar, English isn’t particularly complex.)
With that being said, I think you’re absolutely right. It might be symptomatic of a larger underlying problem though, which is that the rules of grammar are not being emphasised the way they should be. That’s a shame, because being able to communicate clearly and efficiently is one of the most important skills in life, regardless of occupation.
That is kind of weird, isn’t it? They always say THIS ISN’T ENGLISH CLASS and WHAT ARE YOU AN ENGLISH TEACHER except it’s also pretty obvious that this isn’t anything their English teacher is telling them in English class.