Tag: mistakes

Goofs, Gaffs, and Guffaws

Just about the only thing I consider myself an expert in is language. By language, I mean grammar, words, and such. I speak a few languages, and have studied the “old” and “middle” versions of two of those languages. When my writer friends need help with a construct or want to make sure they are writing something correctly, they come to me. I love it not because I am “the expert,” but because I love looking up arcane grammar points, learning subtle grammar, and just expanding my knowledge base. Yes, I do language research just for fun.

 

Now before you go correcting anything and everything I write here, I also know the difference between casual and formal language, and I don’t proofread everything I post here. I am not a typist. I still have to stare at the keyboard to find the right letters (I’m sure it’s just a crutch by now, but I still stare at the keyboard) and not at the page to make sure I’m putting it on paper right, which is why autocorrect annoys me so much. It gets me every time. I don’t want to have to analyze everything I write or write in perfect sentences because then I will just shut down, but errors do not mean I don’t know grammar (Spelling is a whole other can of beans; I have never claimed to know spelling, but I can tell you why some words are spelled the way they are). We all make errors, and honest errors exist. Deal with it.

 

So without further ado, here is a list of my top ten word pet peeves:

 

  1. Fewer vs. less (and along those same lines amount vs. number)—If something has a specific number use fewer; if it’s abstract in number use less. If you can conceivably count it, use fewer. For example: 15 or fewer (items in this lane). Less money, fewer dollars. Fewer people, less humanity.
  2. Between you and I—(shudder) It’s “me!” Cases are important! There’s a country song out there now that says this. Every time I hear it I scream, “Me,” at the proper juncture. Object of a preposition—learn it. And speaking of cases…
  3. The use of “than”—Not then vs. than, just than. If I say, “She is taller than me,” most people will understand that I am shorter than the female in question. But that’s not correct grammar. It should read, “She is taller than I.” You wouldn’t say, “She is taller than me am.” Case matters. The meaning changes between “She likes him better than me,” and “She likes him better than I.” In one I would be invited second. In the other, she can invite him first and I don’t care.
  4. Try to do (or insert whatever verb you want)—I see this all time as “try and do.” In fact I once had a copyeditor change “try to” to “try and.” No. “I will try to sleep” means I am making an attempt at resting and probably failing. “I will try and sleep” means I am attempting something unspecified and then I am falling unconscious for the night. Two separate actions.
  5. Who vs. whom—Call me old fashioned, but I love the distinction. (And we’re back to cases again.) There is a bumper I spy often extolling the joys of rescue animals. While I applaud the sentiment, the slogan “Who saved who?” drives me crazy. Who saved whom? Not that hard. You wouldn’t answer the question with He saved I or I saved he. Where you would use a “him” or a “her” in the sentence, use a “whom” in the question.
  6. Have vs. of—I will disown you if you write “I should of studied English harder.” One is a verb, the other a preposition.
  7. Nonexistent words—I’m lumping these together because there are far too many of them, but my biggest irritations arise from expresso, supposably, and excape.
  8. Wrong phrases—Again, lumping here: For all intensive purposes; just desserts; nip it in the butt (These are the wrong ones. There are many, many more)
  9. Apostrophes for plurals—Do not use an apostrophe to form a plural except in rare cases (Trust me, they are rare). Apostrophes are used to show possession or a missin’ letter (See what I did there?). Not even with numbers.
  10. And while I don’t get too hung up on the whole its-it’s, they’re-their-there, to-too-two (Remarkable really. I usually just shake my head when I see it, but it’s far too easy to type those in incorrectly and not see it on a re-read), loose vs. lose and choose vs. chose annoys me. Watch for wrong words in general. There’s a huge difference between a loose bowel and to lose a bowl.

 

All rules can be bent, shaped, twisted, or broken to achieve a certain writing effect (not affect), but you do have to understand why you are breaking that rule to achieve the effect you wish. Words are important. What are some of your pet peeves in language?

 

–Gabi

 

Books I’m reading now:

A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin (re-read)

Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

 

Errors in Books

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I’m writing this as a self-professed Grammar Nazi.

LIGHTEN UP.

I defy you to find a book without an error in it. I defy you, no matter how much you understand English (and yes, although I am all for learning and speaking and using other languages, this is about English), to write 400 pages and make no mistakes. I defy you to read, re-read, edit, revise, have others look at it, re-read again, and still not find errors in your manuscript. For example, in my last book, WISHFUL THINKING, I was at the galley-proof stage (the point where they send you your book the way it will appear on the page, usually a pdf file), and I still found 147 errors. I know. I counted. But there are degrees of errors, and I put it to you that most are forgivable.

A missing comma here or there shouldn’t cause you to write an angry letter. In fact, I know some  publishing houses that omit commas on purpose. It’s the house “Style.”  Just yesterday I read that one house forbids their authors from using semi-colons. Their reasoning? That genre fiction is supposed to pull the reader in; semi-colons stop the reader and interrupt the flow (See how I did that there?). I have to admit that rule made me cringe. You can’t ban semi-colons. That’s like the time I was kicked out of textbook training when I was teaching because I wouldn’t agree to disagree about what a verb is. But we are trying to make the writing accessible. Grammar and punctuation rules can fly out the window then.

I know I make errors when I write.  Sometimes because I think too fast for my fingers to type ( I never had typing in school. Somehow I skipped that required class). I skip words, or put in part of a word (like par for part) that is a word and my brain, knowing what to expect, fills in the blank. Have you seen those Internet memes that tout your amazing abilities to decipher words written with jumbled inner spelling or numbers replacing letters or backwards? It’s supposedly a sign of your intelligence. No, it isn’t. It’s your brain trying to make sense of what it sees and working the way it should.

Sometimes I spell things wrong. I have never been a speller. Spelling is not grammar. I could go on about the seven different pronunciations of “ough”, the silent “b”, or why “ghoti” spells “fish”, but I’ve done that before. How the “t” in often was said, then silent, and now it’s back. Or not. Both are standard. What kind of language allows you to do that anyway? English, that’s what. I’ve always considered spelling a torture. When I write a novel I do look up every word I may have possible spelled wrong, but I may overlook some because I’m utterly convinced I have it right. And that’s not even worrying about “pore” vs “pour”,  or “hear, hear” vs. “here, here” (By the way, those are the ones that throw me right out of a story–the homonyms used in place of the correct word).

Sometimes things are left out by the printer. In my second novel, my galleys contained a chapter that wasn’t even from my book. Another time a chapter was repeated. I taught DANDELION WINE to my eighth graders. The books we used were missing a couple of paragraphs at the end of one of the chapters. That wasn’t done by the author.

The errors I cannot forgive are content errors. When a character is a certain age, but that doesn’t work out mathematically (Don’t ask me why I catch math errors; I just do). When the character is a widow in one chapter and divorced a few chapters down. When the story is set in a certain year and then people or events are mentioned that couldn’t have taken place in that year (unless it’s alternate reality; then that’s fine). I’ve seen these mistakes in books I’ve read.

And some of the mistakes are the readers’. I once used the word “posh” in a novel set in 1845. I knew the word wasn’t in existence then (yeah, I look that sort of thing up), but it was close enough to the time period that I fudged it. Someone had to use it first, right?) Well, a reader called me on it and gave me the “origin” of the word. It was that cute Internet story about  the English traveling to India on a ship, Port Out, Starboard Home, so they’d know which side of the ship to have their cabins to avoid the sun. Only problem is that story’s not true. I had a friend correct me on “if you think X, then you have another think coming.” She wanted me to write “thing”. Nope, sorry, that’s wrong. (See what I did here with the commas–for effect) And just recently another friend pointed out I’d written “just deserts” wrong. Nope again. It is “just deserts”, not “just desserts”. And would you say, for example: “she is hungrier than me”? That would be incorrect.

And you see how I’m putting the quotes inside the punctuation? That’s the British way, and frankly makes a helluva lot more sense than the American way, so I’m starting the trend. (In certain instances, like these.)

I just read an article about the physicist Paul Dirac. He had some quirks, but when he read WAR AND PEACE his only comment about he novel was that Tolstoy had made the sun rise twice in one day. (Mental Floss, Jan-Feb 2010).  So you see, authors, editors, copy editors, translators (I read the German version of Harry Potter and they translated cat’s whiskers as a mustache), they’re all human. You may get a thrill at finding an error, but get over it. That’s kind of petty. (I know, because I have to admit I get a thrill and feel superior when I find errors. I’m not proud of myself.).

Read the book and enjoy it. That’s why we write. I won’t even go into how ungrammatical speech is here.

–Gabi, who really doesn’t proofread blog articles.

Books I’m reading now:

Vampire in Atlantis by Alyssa Day