Yet Another Rant from the Literacy Loon

Son & Heir spent about $7 on a new hardback novel recently ($4 of that in shipping!). He let me read it first. Nice guy. It was well-written by just about every metric. I spent about $7 for a paperback the other day and found gripe after gripe to make about the writing:

Wrong words abound, e.g., “brake cables” instead of “brake lines” when speaking about the possible sabotage of a car. (Cars have only emergency brake cables; the main brakes are hydraulic and served by lines, not cables. Not a quibble.)

Bafflingly stupid grammar in a published work, e.g., “have rode” where “have ridden” is de rigueur. (“Rode” is simple past tense; the past perfect takes the helper, “have” and requires the use of “ridden”.)

With these kinds of things scattered all over the place, my primary “enjoyment” of this book has been using a red pen to correct the errors.

And this thing made the NYT book list.

No, I’m not naming the author or citing the book title. I wouldn’t want to let Google find those here. Just check page 176 on new paperbacks you’re considering buying, Mmm’K?

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