Is my English that bad? :/

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   ryankettposted 14 years ago

   I have slowly been building up a portfolio on InfoBarrel, part of my strategy to diversify across revenue sharing sites (whilst my own websites establish themselves).
   
   I get a fair few rejections from InfoBarrel, most of them are fair enough - stuff like inserting a link inappropriately. But my latest one takes the biscuit, the reason for denial was:
   
   "Unfortunately, we cannot accept this article as it uses English awkwardly and in many cases it uses words outside of their natural context. Please have somebody who's native language is English review and edit this article to ensure the proper use of English before resubmitting."
   
   Anybody whose native language is English wish to peruse and edit my submission for me? Oh wait, I am a native English speaker In fact, the American website owners are borrowing my language. In fairness I rushed the article, there were a couple of small grammatical errors, as there usually is with my revenue sharing stuff. Here is the unedited first paragraph:
   
   "The proceeds of crime act is an act of UK parliament which came into effect in 2002, it provides a foundation from which courts can recovery assets gained through the proceeds of illegal activities such as drug dealing or widescale fraud. A prosecuting lawyer can request to have a criminals assets seized during their trial, often this results in drug smugglers or money launderers losing their homes and having their bank accounts wiped out. Perhaps the most famous case in the UK in which the Proceeds of Crime Act has been implemented is that of John Darwin who faked his own death for a £250,000 insurance payout. Darwin subsequently fled to Panama with his wife with even his own children having been duped into believing that he was dead."
   
   I am no Wordsworth, but if you can all confirm that I write like a 14 year old Indonesian English student I will happily quit this game forever and resort to posting copyrighted images to Flixya or using nothing but Ezine articles to populate blogs!
   
   Their loss is Hubpages game of course, I don't waste content I have just published it on Hubpages, I didn't bother proofreading, so feel free to come and criticise or point me into the direction of a TEFL tutor

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      darksideposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I know a great place where you can publish excerptz like that.
      
      Oops, I mean excerpts.

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         ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         That is too true Darkside, too true. And don't you worry sunshine, I have a long long word document full of content waiting to be uploaded to that fantastic revenue sharing site.
         
         At least, it will be fantastic when Google gets around to crawling the sitemap

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            David 470posted 14 years agoin reply to this

            It does NOT look like Indonesian trying to learn english at all. I have seen people write horrible. This is profession, it just looks like you added one or two letters somewhere that were not needed.  I do that a sometimes, not because of English problems, but "typos."
            
            For example, how it says recovery and not recover.
            
            I wrote about 5 articles on infobarrel, and have not had any problems yet. Infobarrel seems way inferior to hubpages though..

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      rmcrayneposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      whose

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         Aficionadaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         
         
         That was the one I was going to mention.  It's rather hilarious in the context where it is being used, isn't it?              

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      Jeff Berndtposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Is this a copy-and-paste?
      
      "Please have somebody who's native language is English review and edit this article to ensure the proper use of English before resubmitting."
      
      Really? They don't know the difference between who's and whose, and they're giving you grief about your grammar?
      
      Looks like they could use a copy editor...

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      Hubman007posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      The site is a joke these days. I have had many articles constantly rejected for similar random reasons. I have now given up trying to publish there as its too frustrating.
      
      Its their loss at the end of the day as the site isnt a patch on hubpages!

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   TamCorposted 14 years ago

   Hi Ryan--I looked over your paragraph, and although it's only 5:30 a.m. here and I'm only on my second cup of coffee, I tried to do what I could. 
   
   I'm not an English expert, teacher, anything, lol, so you can take this as you wish! 
   
   Corrections are in parentheses:
   
   "The proceeds of crime act is an act of UK parliament which came into effect in 2002, (AND)it provides a foundation from which courts can recovery(RECOVER) assets gained through the proceeds of illegal activities such as drug dealing or widescale(WIDE SCALE) fraud. A prosecuting lawyer can request to have a criminals(CRIMINAL’S) assets seized during their trial, (AND)often this results in drug smugglers or money launderers losing their homes and having their bank accounts wiped out. Perhaps the most famous case in the UK in which the Proceeds of Crime Act has been implemented is that of John Darwin who faked his own death for a £250,000 insurance payout. Darwin subsequently fleed(FLED) to Panama with his wife with even his own children having been duped into believing that he was dead."
   
   
   Also, it's possible they think a couple of the sentences are too long? I'm not sure about that, though, since I tend to do that myself, lol.
   
   This feels funny--I haven't done this before, but I wanted to give it a shot, to try to help a little bit...

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      recommend1posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      You have got most of the glitches here I would say - the only other thing is that the The proceeds of crime act should be The Proceeds of Crime Act as it is a title.
      
      The reason the article might have triggered some auto pilot grammar assessment would especially be things like
      which courts can recovery assets gained through the proceeds of illegal activities
      This is a very typical mistake from second language speakers.
      
      The innapropriate word use might be things like 'widescale' which is an oddly mixed compound word.  It would normally be widespread or largescale.
      
      I would say that it is in need of editing but to refuse it would is a little anal.

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      Alejendroposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      English is not my Native Language, but anyway here is my attempt.
      
      
      "The proceeds of crime act (Proceeds of Crime Act?) is an act of UK (P?)parliament which came into effect in(from?) 2002, (and?)it provides a foundation from which courts can recovery(recover?) assets gained through the proceeds of illegal activities(,?) such as drug dealing or widescale(wide scale?) fraud. A prosecuting lawyer can request to have a criminals(‘s?) assets seized during their trial,(.?) often this results in drug smugglers or money launderers losing their homes and having their bank accounts wiped out. Perhaps the most famous case in the UK in which the Proceeds of Crime Act has been implemented is that of John Darwin who faked his own death for a £250,000 insurance payout. Darwin subsequently fled to Panama with his wife with even his own children having been duped into believing that he was dead."

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   CASE1WORKERposted 14 years ago

   Hi
   the only slight error I found was the word recovery instead of recover.
   
   Re the content- a request for POCA (Proceeds of Crime Application) is made by the prosecution AFTER  a defendant is found guilty or indeed pleads guilty before a trial. At that point a timetable is often set- the prosecution will outline how much they see the profit as being, the defence will reply with the amount of known assets and the judge will then determine what has to be repaid. (all at pre arranged dates)
   It is an excellent way to get money back and there are targets for the police and cps to achieve poca savings!

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      ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I have reworded my final paragraph to clarify my point there, I am aware that an application has to be submitted to the court for confiscation but I was making reference to the idea that assumption of innocence until proof of guilt is the way that most of our legal system works. The burdeon is now on the criminal to prove that his money is legal, rather than that of the prosecution to prove his guilt.
      
      If somebody is convicted of a fraud, which he benefited from to the tune of £100,000.... the police can apply to have ALL of his assets siezed, which the criminal then has to seek to prove was not gained illegally.

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   ryankettposted 14 years ago

   Lol, but it isn't THAT bad is it? I would accept, "your article has been rejected for grammatical errors", but it's not SO bad that it makes me look like a non-native user of the English language? Right?
   
   Widescale, by the way, is in my English dictionary - it's not my fault that Americans butchered our language
   
   I'm sure that I wouldn't need to capitalise (or is that capitaliZe?) the word criminals either. But I too wrote this in the middle of the night, so I will take it all on the chin

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      TamCorposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Oh no, Ryan!  About criminal--I was just suggesting to add an apostrophe...that's all.  I put all the corrections in capital letters just to make them stand out more, sorry!!! 
      
      And no, I don't think it's bad enough to be considered non-native English, wow.
      
      Sorry about the "butcherization" of widescale...

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   CASE1WORKERposted 14 years ago

   There is zilch wrong with it! I was working with university students who could not string a sentence together!
   Chill out its their loss....silly so and so's

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   Kangaroo_Jaseposted 14 years ago

   Me thinks perhaps the American site Infobarrel doesn't have their computers comprehend English english Ryan, of the 'top of the mornin', oh, ey wot? variety.
   
   They would prolly be unsympathetic of my Aussie English too I thinks mate, coz they'd not get the bloody gist of a come on sheila, she's all bonza, and most unfortunately not give an English or Aussie or an American bloke (or sheila) a fair go, unless he or she uses American English with all the correct and proper grammar

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      TamCorposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Huh, WHAT????   
      
      
      

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      ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      
      
      On a serious note, I get far more British traffic than most on here, about 13% last time I checked.... so I fill an area of the market for Hubpages which InfoBarrel doesn't seem to want to compete in.
      
      (The market for semi-literate British people, clearly).

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         DoorMattnomoreposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         ha ha, non English speaker. that's hilarious!!    well, sorry, you probably don't find it funny. But the whole idea is kinda funny to me, to tell an English guy he doesn't speak English. HAHA.  At least it wasn't an article near and dear to your heart that you had slaved over for hours?

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   ryankettposted 14 years ago

   Lol, in conclusion, I can't write
   
   I don't need a critique of my English, only confirmation that it isn't too bad for a mere revenue sharing site.
   
   If I were attempting to write for a broadsheet that would be a different story, but they simply aren't going to get a thousand Sufidreamer's for a paltry few dollars a day in AdSense revenue.
   
   I hope that Hubpages never heads into the direction of advanced literary critique, whereas a couple of grammatical mistakes can see a Hubpage unpublished.
   
   Hell, if I were to attempt to write every article like it was intended for publication by Harper Collins I would be broke and probably be publishing two Hubpages a week!
   
   I am still going to shoot for 100 articles on there, but they look to be way above their station! Reality check needed me finks. They aren't the New York Times. If only they new what they are missing.
   
   Now, wot ova adsenz sites can i write on coz i want to make millions of bucks?!!!???!!??

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   TamCorposted 14 years ago

   Lol, in conclusion, I can't write lol
   
   I don't need a critique of my English, only confirmation that it isn't too bad for a mere revenue sharing site.
   
   
   Okay, like I said, maybe it's just too dang early in the morning, and my brain isn't firing on all cylinders yet...
   
   I thought that was what you wanted Ryan--sorry to offend.
   
   Obviously, you CAN write, or you wouldn't be doing so well on HP, as it's obvious you are. 

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      ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Oh that wasn't a dig or anything, I accepted and expected people to put me right, I don't worry about the small things on revenue sharing sites.
      
      I just find it amusing that InfoBarrel are the only revenue sharing site to hold standards akin to a national newspaper, I read much worse in my local rag every day.
      
      Every time I pick up a particular British tabloid paper I see photos captioned with somebodies name, only to find that they have posted a picture of an entirely different person - particularly in the sports section!

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   kirstenblogposted 14 years ago

   Ryan - nothing wrong with your English, better the most I would say. If we are going to nit pick I would say that their statement of your use of the language being awkward was itself a bit awkward.

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      ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Ironically they approved another article around the same time which was probably worse than this one.
      
      They clearly identified that the title was one which is likely to have a very high cpc.
      
      I will see how I get on there, all I can really ask is consistant standards - although anything which they reject is going to be used by rival sites so like I said, their loss!
      
      I would never reject legible English content if it passed copyscape, wasn't spammy or against AdSense TOS, and was unique content. And neither would any other revenue sharing site I suspect.
      
      Revenue sharing sites, as we all know, are effectively bottom feeders.... they don't get the pick of the bunch, any literate person should be seen as an asset in my opinion.
      
      Goodness knows what they say when a genuine non-native writer posts something which has been put through a crap translation tool. If it were a post about asbestos conditions or credit cards no doubt they would be rubbing their hands with glee and accepting it

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         kirstenblogposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Things that make you go, hmmmmm.

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    lrohnerposted 14 years ago

    I work as an editor on another site that's stricter than InfoBarrel (they pay upfront plus RevShare,) and I wouldn't have sent that article back based on what I saw.
    
    Sloppy writing? Sure. But at least the errors were minor and fixable, and the piece had some decent content. If I had been the editor on that piece, I would have just fixed the errors and sent you a note.
    
    Heck, you should see the amount of articles I reject each month from ESL writers from India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Thailand, not to mention the spammers from the US who submit stuff like this:
    
    "I like peanut butter sandwiches because peanut butter sandwiches have a lot of peanut butter on the sandwich so that peanut butter sandwiches are good to eat."
    
    Heck, your writing was 100000000 times better than a lot of the articles that are put in front of me. I would bet it was either a new editor, a cranky editor or one who had reviewed several of your articles in a row seeing the same type of mistakes in each.

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       ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       What site do you work for lrohner? Any room for a little one?

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          lrohnerposted 14 years agoin reply to this

          You've probably heard it mentioned before -- BrightHub. I think WryLilt writes there and I know RMCrayne just got accepted. They pay $10 upfront for a 450-word piece plus RevShare for the life of the article.
          
          I gotta run babysit the monsters - um, I mean grandbabies. Drop me a note if you want more info.

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             David 470posted 14 years agoin reply to this

             I'm going to check that site out. It may not be passive income like hubpages, but the thought of upfront payments along with some passive income sounds good.
             
             How strict are they precisely? I was afraid infobarrel was going to reject my articles, but they did not yet.
             
             I would like to write some fitness niche stuff on that site maybe...

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    Sophia Angeliqueposted 14 years ago

    @Ryankett. Ryan, I can see a lot of errors, but they all strike me as made while someone's brain is ahead of his pen. In other words, there are run on sentences, nouns used as adjectives, etc. Sorry, don't have time to edit it. You just need to proof your stuff, even if it's a rush job. It's not worth the rejection and the accompanying loss of credibility.

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       ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       I can't see how that loses me credibility in any way, shape, or form.

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    skyfireposted 14 years ago

    Well i'm not a native english speaker/writer so my english is likely to be garbled in many places and even i got my article denied once by infobarrel. I do managed to get my other articles approved on infobarrel later.
    
    I'm glad that squidoo and hubpages are not that strict on publishing criteria. I don't know why content networks create such strict guidelines and then end up with templates which ultimately gets dinged by google. (Referring to ehow and about.com). I'm all for grammatical improvements but too much grammar policing is useless because it ends up with some recognizable template of content farm. If you read comments on hubs/lenses then you can see that even people from native-english lands make so many grammatical mistakes.
    
    In my opinion, those who read too much into your writing are not going to buy any stuff from you or they don't even care for the message that you want to convey. Those who care too much about typo/grammar are going to buy stuff directly from amazon or online shop. I don't write hubs/lenses for those who take shots on my grammar. I write hubs because i prefer to solve problems with/without grammatical mistakes. Feel free to attack folks .

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       lrohnerposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Suffice it to say that I totally and completely disagree with you.
       
       Articles with an overabundance of typos, misspellings that are clearly not typos, bad grammar, incorrect punctuation and mangled sentence structure clearly show me that whoever wrote it didn't give a hoot about my reading experience. In turn, I could give a hoot about their writing. It only takes a few minutes to run something through a spelling and grammar checker. If a writer can't be bothered to take the time, I can't be bothered reading their work.
       
       And for the most part, these are the same people who make sure their appearance is acceptable before venturing out in public, that their homes are neat and clean before entertaining guests and that their breath doesn't stink when they're going out on a date. They get online and it's like all pride just gets shot to hell. Sigh...

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    Neville Walkposted 14 years ago

    I recently submitted a piece of work to an online grammar checker.  This site concluded that my work contained several "offensive" words, which resulted in the low score I received.  The offending words included, "bring, because, thing, loved, well, it and old." It also added that my use of the term "lady" was sexist, and suggested the use of the term "woman" instead.  Yet, my use of "gentleman" was acceptable, with no suggestion for using "man". I failed to see their point.  I then decided to submit something, written purposely badly, using what passes for English on the streets of England today.  It started, "This is a play, wot I wrote, about a cool dude, innit."  I received a very favourable score and positive feedback for this piece. I concluded that my use of language must be stuck in the past and that it pays to write as someone who uses English as a second language.

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       Sophia Angeliqueposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       @ Neville. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I think I've been through similar with Demand Studios.

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    Home Girlposted 14 years ago

    "...a criminals assets" A   criminals assets? You must be kidding, it's a crime, you are not English, you are hiding your identity, shame on you. What a criminals assets yea a hiding ???

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