Back when we thought grades were a good idea, we made a list of things we'd take off for. Even though we don't "grade" now, we still use this as a guide for what we say about a fic.While we're on the things that seemed like a good idea at the time, visit this page to see our alternatives to the new ratings system going around (K, my ass.)
Bad Grammar ( "Their here"; "i waited to long"; "I be...")
Bad Spelling ("pleaz"; Chatspeak)
Improbability (Buffy fainting just because Angel kissed another girl)
Clichés (High school; Buffy and Angel working on a project together)
Lack of Plot Development (Storyline stays the same throughout the fic without the characters developing)
Bad Characterization in Cannon and AR that stems from the show (Having a character say something that they’d never say on the show)
Using the same word too often (It gets annoying.)
Lack of Continuity (Basically not remembering your own plot)
Unbelievable Dialogue (Buffy telling her life story to people she met six seconds ago.)
Lack of Sentence Variety (Most sentences starting the same way)
Tediousness (Would I rather poke my own eyes out than read the fic?)
Bad Diction (Diction is word choice - Using words that you clearly don’t know the meaning off; Saying something along the lines of "Or as Giles would say ‘indeed’." - Indeed is a common word, lots of people use it so it’s not a Gilesism.)