Late at night on 24 June 2012, I had finally had enough; I started this blog. Should anyone in the blogosphere actually care, I will be surprised.
There is much angst about education and how poorly Americans do. While I do not pretend to know the reasons, I know for a fact that it's true.
- We cannot spel.
- Cannot write complete sentences.
- We do not know the correct use of apostrophe's.
- We know not the distinctions between adjectives and adverbs at all good.
- We have no concept of correct punctuation with commas especially giving us the willies either putting in too many or too few.
- Us do not at all grasp the difference between subject and object, particularly when using pronouns, although myself certainly does.
Many would agree with me about the appalling lack of writing/speaking ability in the general populace. However, I find that most people are completely uncritical in their reading, overlooking various and sundry mistakes in the written word. One would think that publishers and, particularly, editors would be above that. One would be seriously mistaken.
These days, no one can edit. Well, at least, copy edit. I make no claim to being able to do a publishing house's editor's job. That requires a skill set that I lack. However, I feel that I'm a damned good copy editor and that copy editor inside me groans every time I read a mistake that escaped detection during the publication process. While I might be willing to give those who have to publish daily a bit of a break, I see no reason why so very many lapsus get past the various levels of editing that are performed on books. They scream at me as I go winging along the printed line, my mind hiccups, and I have to backtrack, and then groan again as I realize that here is yet another mistake on the page. On this page.
This blog is intended as a vent for my frustration before I, as Mick Jagger sang, "blow a fifty-amp fuse." I have no doubt that if my rants reach anyone, the result will be a decided case of preaching to the choir. However, I very much enjoy reading and it pisses me off that writers, editors, and publishers can be successful despite so many mistakes, so many mistakes easily avoided by following a simple precaution: read what is written!
The piece that put me over the top was a bit surprising to me, as it wasn't anything within a story I was reading. No, it was a quote from a review of a book in the front pages of another book, a paperback version of Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin R. Kiernan. The review, published in Gauntlet Magazine, was of one of the author's previous books, Threshold. The quote, in its entirety is:
Threshold confirms Kiernan's reputation as one of dark fiction's premier stylists. Her poetic descriptions ring true and evoke a sense of cosmic dread to rival Lovecraft. Her writing envelopes the reader in a fog concealing barely glimpsed horrors that frighten all the more for being just out of sight.
Did you spot it? Or, rather, them, the two mistakes in just three sentences? If you did, then you have a much more discerning eye (and mind) than do 99.99% of readers. While many would quibble about the first being a mistake, it is one. About the second, there can be no quibbling. If you haven't spotted them, yet, ignore the first sentence, and carefully scan each of the other sentences.
Mistake #1: In the second sentence, the review author is comparing apples and orangutans, poetic descriptions and Lovecraft. Now, while H. P. Lovecraft wrote dark tales and horror, I know of no source that considers him to be dark or horrible. The author surely intended to compare the writing styles of the two authors, not the writing style of one author directly with the second author. That is, the writing style of Kiernan to Lovecraft, the man. I plan to blog about faulty comparisons in writing in more depth in the near future.
