There’s a
quotation (that comes in several versions) attributed (without supporting
evidence) to the great Western writer Mark Twain: “I don’t give a damn for a
man that can only spell a word one way.”
It seems
that attitude is becoming popular among American writers.
As a
sometimes book reviewer and writing contest judge, I read a lot of books. And
more and more, I find a lot of editing errors. Punctuation is often sloppy.
Sentence construction is sometimes unfathomable. Word choice questionable.
And correct
spelling overlooked.
Letters in a
word might be inverted. A related—but wrong—word form might be used. A homonym
might be used in place of the correct word. Occasionally I come across a word
that is correctly spelled but is the altogether wrong word—not a homonym,
exactly, but sometimes it’s a word close enough to what the author intended
that I can figure out what it should be.
I find such
easy-to-correct errors in traditionally published books, but rarely. They
appear more often in books from small publishers. But they appear most often in
self-published books. Sometimes, in self-published books in which the author acknowledges
an editor or proofreader or both. They should ask for a refund.
But, really,
they should fix these things themselves. Everybody makes mistakes, and errors have
a way of slipping through. There is no excuse, however, for outright
sloppiness. Spell checkers help, but can’t flag a correctly spelled word used
incorrectly. Use a dictionary if you’re not absolutely sure. It only takes a
minute. Simple spelling errors should be as rare as hen’s teeth in a published
book.
Truth be
told, out of respect for readers they should be just as rare in online
postings, emails, letters, and everything we write—but that may be too much to
ask. Especially in a time when pointing out online mistakes creates furor and derision.
If you
believe the aforementioned quotation attributed to Mark Twain, he would be
delighted with the current state of affairs when it comes to spelling.
But I doubt
it.
