*gagamaggot*
Reading almost anything written in the last 30 years is a crap shoot. As traditional publishers have come to be run more and more by bean counters and literate editors have been more and more pushed aside in favor of hucksters who know how to weigh manuscripts or some other such stupid criteria, the murder of the English language there has become more and more par for the course. Still, there seem to be a (very) few literate adults left in trad pub houses.
“Indie” publishing is all over the place, but yes, execrable treatment of English is a wee tad more common in “Indie” books. It’s as though in all forms of publishing practiced nowadays, books are becoming dominated by products from writers (and proofreaders and editors) who all received degrees in Assassinating English from Valley Girl U.
Example abound, but the proximal cause of this wee rant is,
“If X didn’t hack into Y’s accounts and trace the money to Z, we might never have put it together.”
No, moronic graduate of Valley Girl U. No. “”If X hadn’t hacked. . . ”
I really, really, really wanted to dope slap the writer (and any proofreader and editor) for that, especially since it was the capstone of many usage, grammar and utterly stupid POV errors.
People who want to get paid to write (or proofread or edit) text should do their due diligence. They ought to at least work to become minimally literate. The example above disqualifies the writer (and any proofreader and editor involved in the book) from inclusion in the class, “literate.”
Note: I read a lot of advance reader copies, but I don’t read them as critically, because they are, for the most part, unproofed ARCs. The interesting thing, to me, is that unproofed ARCs from one particular publisher are comparable in quality of grammar, usage, etc., to “proofed” works that are published from many other publishers. Interesting, as I said, to me.
Anymore, a majority of the newly-written books I purchase tend to be from that publisher. I wonder why?