Killing English, by means of one illiterate boob at a time: “hammy-downs” (hand-me-downs) made it through proofreading and editing to published book. *smh*
"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
The more of that sort of thing seeps into popular “literature” the worse the problem will likely become. People who don’t know better appear to think, “It’s in a published work so it must be right.” As a result the language rots.
Yep. Secret fantasy: some extraterrestrial alien looks upon our society and creates a nano-virus to eradicate every thesaurus in the English language, give wannabe writers a splitting headache every time they use the wrong homonym, etc. *heh* The script almost writes itself. (Would be useless to write it as a book, since none of the wannabe writers who should read it either would or would understand the premise if they did read it.)
Some of the best writing advice I’ve ever seen said that before becoming a writer one should first be a reader. I think that nano virus should be programmed to ensure that writers have to read at least three times as much as they write. And it should debilitate any writer that tries to use an idiom that they’ve only heard and not read.
Three times as much as they write? They should start having read at least 1,000 books written by literate writers before ever putting pen to paper (or electrons to word processors). (The “1,000 books written by literate writers” is lowballing it.) I am familiar with (well, with the writings of) a gal who puts out at least six 300+ page books/year that are well-written (not padded or filled with subliterate writing mistakes, etc) and interesting. In some of her video commentaries, she talks about the books she is reading, has read, and specifically books she sought out and read in preparation for turning her writing to different topics or genres.
Oh, nothing she writes is of serious importance, except that she is a masterful storyteller who is always honing her craft.
I seek out writers like that in whatever genre, whether fiction or non-fiction. If their next book isn’t better, they just ain’t tryin’.