Enormity indeed
Yesterday evening I started a frivolous read of a novel about life at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in the ’50s. I stopped reading at the top of page 12. Here’s why:
Page 2, in an account of marital sex: “she had instead surrendered to the enormity of him.”
Page 6, of an elderly fellow resident of the Barbizon: “Only her tentative movements…and the lines around her mouth and down her neck, belied her advanced age.”
Page 12: “Leave it to Patrick to bury the lead.”
Great god almighty are there no editors any more? How did no one catch these? Just in the first 12 pages!
Well that begs the question, what happened? What’s the ending comprised of? You should of finished it!
lol well done.
Wasn’t easy. Autocorrect keeps correcting “should of”.
The struggle is real.
For years now I have bemoaned the loss of sub-editors at Newspapers. They were the ones who caught the errors made by harried journos and made sure the paper was readable.
Just yesterday the local (Murdoch) paper had a headline “Driver banned until end of the century”. The first line of the article read “A driver will have to wait until the year 3000 to regain his licence”.
I’m finding tweets that are far better written than the local chip wrapper and I don’t have to pay 3 bucks to have my intelligence insulted.
I’ve been noticing a lot of errors too, and some of them very blatant. Extra words, weird punctuation, spelling errors…and, of course, factual errors.
I was at a restaurant today that informed me they were now closed “Sunday’s”.
Bahahahaha century millennium who’s counting?
I’m glad I’m not the only one bothered by “comprised of” and getting the meaning of “belied” exactly backwards.
I didn’t even know people get “belied” backwards. I hate learning new things.
Personally I find it bemusing.
Quite a fulsome number of examples here.
It’s SO aggravating.
Here’s an unsubstantiated thought that my inner grammar Nazi finds satisfying. One of the social forces that’s contributed to the general decline of English mastery is a reluctance to say that someone’s speech or writing is incorrect. It’s not just considered rude; it’s considered indicative of something like classism or racism. There’s even a pair of academic words that are trotted out and (mis)used to convince people that the very concept of correct grammar is outmoded, elitist nonsense best left in history’s dustbin: descriptivism and prescriptivism. And just like with Genderism, the fact of linguistic change is used as a per se justification for whatever abomination believers see fit to vomit forth today.