From time to time I get the chance to review books for a number of journals. Some of these, in the deeply competitive market place that is literature, have the odd grammatical and printing error. If there are enough of them, and they have sufficiently irritated me, I draw attention to this shortfall in my assessment of the work.
I do so charily, knowing I have lived something of a charmed life in the hostile world of words and what people read. For some time I worked as a sub-editor. Most of my journalistic career was in broadcasting which is, for the spellingly challenged, forgiving – if the newsreader gets the sounds right, no-one knows how the script is spelled. Or spelt.
My first novel, Harbour Glimpses, was published recently online. Of course, I did the thing that all authors do when a book comes out. I initially called on home team support. From this a couple of good reviews followed. But, in the same way I act as critic, not everything glisters.
On the day of the ebook’s release I received an email that informed me of my sins –‘ to prove that I am a literary critic whose sole purpose is to find tiny proof reading flaws’ – that I had mistaken ‘faint’ for ‘feint’. Or the other way round. It appears variantly twice – adjective and adverb – in a book of 55,000 words.
Readers of a certain age will remember exercise books marked as ‘Narrow Feint’. And there is, I contend, an arguable case for an ancient spelling of a thing that is faded. It was that particular expression I could pretend I had used in my book. I might have got away with it once. When it comes to the adverb, I have to concede that the case is closed.
There has also been a challenge to my spelling of the word 'carcase'. Should it be 'carcass'? Dictionaries seem to suggest there is a British usage for the former. I may live in the United Kingdom, but the novel is set in Sydney, so which rendering is the appropriate one?
My father, as I have written elsewhere, was a stickler for these things. He would rail and rant over spelling and grammar. I have related a story of his devouring a long book in an afternoon, only to pronounce that he had picked up a howler on one page deep into the narrative. I checked. He was right.
Proof reading is a dying skill. As is sub-editing. A friend, recently retired from a career in journalism, terms online reporting as ‘not wrong for long’. Pick up an error, alert the author who can correct it, and you may be lucky enough for no-one to have witnessed your faux pas in the first place.
Harbour Glimpses has picked up some good reviews and I am grateful for that. Of course, writing is no longer enough. We all have to be promoters and marketeers. I have never really been gifted in those fields but, like my faltering steps with the pen, it is a sentence that still needs to be written. Or is it writ?
I do so charily, knowing I have lived something of a charmed life in the hostile world of words and what people read. For some time I worked as a sub-editor. Most of my journalistic career was in broadcasting which is, for the spellingly challenged, forgiving – if the newsreader gets the sounds right, no-one knows how the script is spelled. Or spelt.
My first novel, Harbour Glimpses, was published recently online. Of course, I did the thing that all authors do when a book comes out. I initially called on home team support. From this a couple of good reviews followed. But, in the same way I act as critic, not everything glisters.
On the day of the ebook’s release I received an email that informed me of my sins –‘ to prove that I am a literary critic whose sole purpose is to find tiny proof reading flaws’ – that I had mistaken ‘faint’ for ‘feint’. Or the other way round. It appears variantly twice – adjective and adverb – in a book of 55,000 words.
Readers of a certain age will remember exercise books marked as ‘Narrow Feint’. And there is, I contend, an arguable case for an ancient spelling of a thing that is faded. It was that particular expression I could pretend I had used in my book. I might have got away with it once. When it comes to the adverb, I have to concede that the case is closed.
There has also been a challenge to my spelling of the word 'carcase'. Should it be 'carcass'? Dictionaries seem to suggest there is a British usage for the former. I may live in the United Kingdom, but the novel is set in Sydney, so which rendering is the appropriate one?
My father, as I have written elsewhere, was a stickler for these things. He would rail and rant over spelling and grammar. I have related a story of his devouring a long book in an afternoon, only to pronounce that he had picked up a howler on one page deep into the narrative. I checked. He was right.
Proof reading is a dying skill. As is sub-editing. A friend, recently retired from a career in journalism, terms online reporting as ‘not wrong for long’. Pick up an error, alert the author who can correct it, and you may be lucky enough for no-one to have witnessed your faux pas in the first place.
Harbour Glimpses has picked up some good reviews and I am grateful for that. Of course, writing is no longer enough. We all have to be promoters and marketeers. I have never really been gifted in those fields but, like my faltering steps with the pen, it is a sentence that still needs to be written. Or is it writ?
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