I lied in the title.
No one
knowledgeable, to my knowledge, tells writers to ignore the essentials—small
stuff—like spelling and grammar and basic facts in manuscripts and books.
But as often
as those things are ignored nowadays, you’d think it was part of the curriculum
somewhere. Time was, it was so difficult to find a spelling error in a
published book that it was noteworthy.
No longer.
With the
advent of do-it-yourself self-publishing, the proliferation of small presses
who can’t afford copy editors and proofreaders, and even the staff cutbacks at
major publishers, errors of the simplest kind now slip through regularly.
As I write
this I am in the middle of a novel I was asked to review, and on several
occasions the author has called those leather straps you use to control a horse
“reigns.” It’s a homonym, sure, but it’s such a ridiculous error there’s no
excuse for it. Likewise his saying a just-planted wheat field had been “sewn.” That
one had me in stitches.
Then there
are incorrect facts, if such an oxymoron exists. Some time back I read a novel
by an author who has written many, many paperback Westerns for major publishers.
And yet he continually referred to the “traces” on a harnessed team as if they
were the lines (or reins, if you’d rather, but lines is the more common term).
“Traces” are something else altogether on a harness, and he ought to know the
difference—or not use the word if he doesn’t.
We all make
mistakes. But there are mistakes, and there are mistakes.
Sometimes
writing instructors will tell you to blow by that simple stuff in the initial
draft in order to get the story down. But that is with the expectation that
you’ll go back and fix it. Unfortunately, too many authors—and publishers—don’t
fix it.
And that
shows a lack of respect for readers. Of all things, a writer ought to be
literate.
