Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We all know about basic grammar errors -- it's vs. its, your vs. you're, whose vs. who's, I vs. me, who vs. whom, that vs. who, then vs. than, etc. Most of us would not have any problem differentiate the basic right from wrong but we still find those errors in books anyway, and that annoys me, but not as much as another:
My rant here is about something that I find, repeatedly, in many books and from many different authors: the incorrect use of foreign language.
This happens almost all the time when the hero is Italian or from some make-believe countries where Italian is the official language (a mystery I cannot understand: why is it the language of make-believe countries is always Italian and not Spanish or French?)
Does not matter that the hero speaks English fluently, he still uses Italian terms of endearment, but 99.99% of the time, the terms are grammatically incorrect. I'm talking about the kind of errors not even a 4-year-old Italian child would make.
In languages that distinguishes masculine from feminine, vocabulary always changes with gender, but the authors did not seem to care bout the difference. Instead, the hero would tenderly addresses his wife/girlfriend/lover or his daughter as "mio bello" (my beautiful man/boy), "caro" (dear for masculine), "bambino" (baby boy), "piccolo" (little one, masculine), etc. That sounds extremely ignorant and simply kills the story for me.
There are more intricate errors (using articles for family members, wrong order of noun-adjective, etc.) which bug me but not as much as those basic errors mentioned above.
I imagine the authors just plug English terms (or, at times, a sentence or two) into Babel Fish or Google translation and let it fly instead of asking for help from a native speaker. That carelessness irks me a great deal. Do you find any errors that annoy you that much, or am I the only picky reader?
Last edited by Ol' Wanderer; 11-29-2011 at 03:16 PM..
I've never really noticed stuff like that (altho I do sympathise), but it does bug me when someone obviously just hasn't bothered to do their research or hired a decent fact-checker. I've actually complained to publishers about their writers who apparently decided the city of Birmingham in the UK was a "suburb" of London or that the city of Salisbury was a "village" even tho it has one of the most stupendous cathedrals in the country. Grrrrrr!
Factual errors. A few months ago I was reading a book on President Obama and the author said Air Force One landed at the airport at the Orange County (CA) Fairgrounds. Nice try, but it's a small strip that couldn't handle a 747 on its best day.
Factual errors. A few months ago I was reading a book on President Obama and the author said Air Force One landed at the airport at the Orange County (CA) Fairgrounds. Nice try, but it's a small strip that couldn't handle a 747 on its best day.
Stuff like that makes me nuts.
There is not an airport at OC Fairgrounds so the author was dead wrong there.
Also wrong if he meant the nearby John Wayne, because as you stated correctly, 747 is not permitted to land at John Wayne due to local noise restriction that requires full force takeoff/landing.
Air Force One did land at El Toro Air Base though, but that was way before Obama. When Obama came to CA in 2009, the plane landed at Long Beach.
I've actually complained to publishers about their writers who apparently decided the city of Birmingham in the UK was a "suburb" of London or that the city of Salisbury was a "village" even tho it has one of the most stupendous cathedrals in the country. Grrrrrr!
I've heard many authors, newspaper reporters, and TV broadcasters calling Orange County a suburb of Los Angeles. The 6th most populous county in the country is a suburb of a city?
Just read a book today in which the characters took a commuter plane from Denver to Boulder for shopping!
The author definitely has never been to Denver, and she also has never known about Google map. A commuter flight for a short 30-mile distance that is easily covered by light rail and freeway?
My pet peeve is those relatively relatively complex and sophisticated non-fiction books that do not have an index. I find that a major publishing boner, and annoyance.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
