And for those of you who've found a summary worth your time… (By the way, congratulations!)

A/N: All comments are strictly speculative and do not apply to EVERY story or person out there. Stop e-mailing me.

Part Three:

Skimming

1.The Infamous Author's Note

In my experience, I've found that the author's note can tell you a lot about an author. There are several different kinds, but we'll get to them later.

Basically, an author's note is just an author's way of welcoming you to their story. Many writers use these as a lengthened summary, and others use them to state why they wrote the story. Some use them as a way for their readers to get to know a bit more about the author's personal lives or opinions, and some choose not to write them at all. Any way you have it, they really are a useful tool to uncover exactly who you're dealing with.

Now, who are these cleverly camouflaged mystery-folk? And, really, do we want to know? A good place to start is skimming through the story. Any middle-of-story A/Ns are big-time red lights, and anything longer than the actual story… You might as well go back to your search right now.

For the more complex and (what they like to think as) sneaky A/Ns, here's what I've come to find:

-The Incredible, Edible Cyber Cookies

What will they think up next? Apparently, if you end up reading and reviewing these desperate (key word, here) authors' stories, you'll get cyber cookies! …Not true. This offer, while enticing, simply screams twelve-year-old desperado.

-The Non-Existent Lead-On

While no author's note is attached, here, the first sentence is still something along the lines of 'Ginny shook the water out of her mane of fiery hair and whispered 'Let's go upstairs' into Harry's ear', 'Ashlee's eyes twinkled at the sight of Hogwarts, as did her diamond-studded heels', or the ever-popular '"LOL!" cried Hermione, "DRACO GOT SOOOOOO TOTALLY HAWT OVER THA SUMMER!"'. Steer very, very clear. Please, for your own sake. You're dealing with citrus, Mary-Sues, and morons, here.

-The Non-Existent Miracle Worker

Dear God these people are wonderful. These are those heroes of the Fanfiction world that don't want you to know them from their mindless jib-jab, but from the words that weave together a beautiful story. They want nothing to do with you, they just want you to get straight to the story and then do what you please. I applaud you.

-The Complete and Utter Idiot

When they aren't painting their toe-nails, talking on the phone, or giggling, these oh-so-adorable (heh) morons choose to write Fan Fiction for whatever reason. Because there are not words to describe, I'm going to have to just flat-out show you exactly what I mean.

My first fic lol so no flames! OMFG Stacy WTF did you mean by THAT! Lol j/k gurl! N-E wayz I hope u like it! Its about Ron n Herminee (sp.?) when she fallz in luv n gets a makeover n stuff! ITS REALLY COOL! (r&r)

I think it's hysterical how I'm almost positive that it took them probably a good 15 minutes just to write these, too. But some things to notice before I start a flat-out rant: 1) Lots of z's in place of s's, misspellings, and loads of capitol letters. 2) No punctuation, besides the occasional quotation mark and an impressive amount of exclamation points. 3) More Internet lingo than I can use in five weeks. 4) Abbreviated short words (i.e. You u, Love luv, Any N-E, etc.). 5) The 'bff' inside joke that no one cares about (except for Stacy, of course). And 6) The inevitable self-assuring 'OMFG THIS STORY IZ SO COOL U'LL LUV IT!'…thing. Now, sit there and tell me you aren't cringing.

-The End-of-Story Note

These are the tricky ones, but mostly I choose to ignore them all. Mostly they're just reminders to review, as if any of us REALLY need reminding if we were planning on it, anyway, or another delicious-sounding offering of more cyber cookies.

2. Grammar

Alright, most of us can spot a grammatical mistake the second we see it, right? No, I'm wrong. Apparently, hardly any of us can.

See, this I just do not get. Half of all stories I flame up the wa-zoo could be a thousand times better if they just checked their English! It's exasperating! I mean, honestly, do you morons want to look like you've just finished the second grade?

Alright, I know, I know, I'm ranting. It's just- People, you've GOT to understand that Fan Fiction is NOT about people just writing whatever they want! It's about people writing about someone else's work and letting other people have the opportunity to read what you can come up with. And when other people have to struggle to understand exactly what you're trying to write, just because you can't construct a proper sentence to save your life… Let's just say it's a bit tactless if you're trying to make a good impression.

On that note, here are a few tips on how to catch the grammatically impaired in the act, and quickly:

-Their first sentence makes very little sense, is confusing, ends in six prepositions, etc…

-There are more commas than letters.

-All but three words are spelled incorrectly, and two out of those were single-syllabic.

-The paragraphs/sentences begin with lower-case letters.

-More than forty-five semicolons are present… in six sentences.

-Four incessant exclamation points end ¾ of all sentences.

…and such.

But, think. If you really can point out more than an acceptable amount of errors in just a skim-over (I like to go with one or less, just because I'm a Picky), isn't it possible that this was just one of those get-an-idea-and-type-it-up-ASAP things? So it's most likely not even worth while.

That, and the fact that first off, this person apparently didn't even care about spell-checking, and second, they didn't even re-read.

Stay tuned for any next installments that might pop into my head!

-Kyle, the SFG