dear editor
14 Feb 2008 12:16 pmI know you're very busy, and I know your publishing house probably isn't big enough to pay for an editor as well as a copyeditor, so here's a small trick I learned years and years ago, before the advent of spellcheckers. To find the especially prickly homonym-type spelling errors (such as the kind we're now cursed with, thanks to Word's auto-correct feature), read the story backwards. It's a great deal harder for your brain to superimpose a mental auto-correction when the next word you read is not the logical 'next' word in a sentence.
Then you'd probably be more certain of catching peculiar spelling mistakes like, "the thundering hoard," which to your many-times-read eyes was probably an invisible mistake. I've never read this story before, and believe me, that error leapt out at me with full force.
On the other hand, you might be relieved to read that I may be the only one who reads that and also thinks immediately of my dogs. Sachiko is big on hoarding all her toys, after all, and while I may grimace at having what's supposed to be a spectacularly tense high point in the story interrupted by thoughts of a dog bed littered with toys, I also find it an apt description... just not the one the author intended. Somehow, the visual of an army of monkey, bear, and frog plushies thundering their way across the plain to save the day is just not fitting with a medieval action/thriller.
Muchlove,
me.
ps. While you're at it, please inform the author that there are plenty of other time-appropriate words to use than just varlet, and that at two-thirds the way through the story, I'm beginning to get a bit varletted out, kthxbai.
ETA: Just found one that needs to go down on The List: ...a lone rider separated himself from Winthrop's writhing thong, coming to a stop mere feet from Gareth... I'll ignore the general awkwardness, but... WRITHING THONG. We'll also ignore that my first word choice for "a group of men on horseback excited about news" would not necessarily be "writhing" but... THONG.
The visual, people, the visual. IT BURNSSS USSSS.
Then you'd probably be more certain of catching peculiar spelling mistakes like, "the thundering hoard," which to your many-times-read eyes was probably an invisible mistake. I've never read this story before, and believe me, that error leapt out at me with full force.
On the other hand, you might be relieved to read that I may be the only one who reads that and also thinks immediately of my dogs. Sachiko is big on hoarding all her toys, after all, and while I may grimace at having what's supposed to be a spectacularly tense high point in the story interrupted by thoughts of a dog bed littered with toys, I also find it an apt description... just not the one the author intended. Somehow, the visual of an army of monkey, bear, and frog plushies thundering their way across the plain to save the day is just not fitting with a medieval action/thriller.
Muchlove,
me.
ps. While you're at it, please inform the author that there are plenty of other time-appropriate words to use than just varlet, and that at two-thirds the way through the story, I'm beginning to get a bit varletted out, kthxbai.
ETA: Just found one that needs to go down on The List: ...a lone rider separated himself from Winthrop's writhing thong, coming to a stop mere feet from Gareth... I'll ignore the general awkwardness, but... WRITHING THONG. We'll also ignore that my first word choice for "a group of men on horseback excited about news" would not necessarily be "writhing" but... THONG.
The visual, people, the visual. IT BURNSSS USSSS.