Reputation
I have the unenviable reputation of being a bit of a nitpicker when it comes to words. I spent three or so years working for a contract publishing house. You know how, when you want to build a house on your own, you hire a contractor, right? Well, when people wanted to publish a book, they hired us. So, for three years, my entire working life was caught up with words and the sometimes-hilarious ways that people use them. (Just realized I’m totally rationalizing my nitpicky-ness. That’s kind of funny). Anyway, I’m working hard to not be such a nitpicker in regular conversation.
But, when I see something like this:
I can’t help but play spot the errors. You can play along in the comments.
oh my word! is this for real? lots of run on sentences and capitalization errors, for starters.i guess i won’t fret too much about my occasional grammatical brain malfunctions after reading that! furthermore, i realize i didn’t capitalize anything in this comment, but i am admittedly lazy in that dept. also and in conclusion, i am glad that wordpress has spell check…i used it several times while writing this.
te he he
Wow. That’s gotta be a self-published book that had no editing, right? (I’ve worked on lots worse!)
Dear Hermit,
If you’ve worked on lots worse I have a new respect for you.
I think this must be a joke, or a training exercise. I feel like I’ve been hit with a two by four or something. How do you go on to page 10 without losing your mind? If I wanted to write (rewrite) a book I would have to start from scratch. And then I’d get a good editor or three.
No fair posting my ms on the web.
Dear Editor Wannabeenotnow,
Yes, usually from people whose first language is not English. Most recently, a man from Germany. In their written language, they capitalize all nouns. He apparently did not realize that we do not do the same. The punctuation was all over the place, many words were interchanged (were/where, life/live, side/site, pub/pup…a long list of them), and so on and so forth. I was glad when I was done!