When I woke up yesterday morning, I was astonished to discover that it was Thursday, and the blog wasn’t written. Where did the week go? Down the editorial letter drain.
From Friday of last week until eleven PM Wednesday night, I was working on Remains of Innocence–page by page and word by word. Typos are the bane of my existence. The is/it, an/and, if/it, on/one errors are so difficult to spot, and they sneak in everywhere. And characters’ names tend to morph over time. I noticed last night that Joanna’s secretary, who has always been Kristen, was suddenly Kirsten, while someone named Stephens veered into Stevens towards the end of the book. And then there are the invisible double words–“the the,” for example–that the mind simply breezes over without even noticing.
I started Friday morning by taking a manuscript file written in the previous version of Pages and updating it to the new one. I was worried about it. My challenging experience with a corrupted version of the new spell-check feature had left me gun-shy. The new program had hidden the dictionary function–Bill was able to find it–and the word count function as well. They were there, all right, but in places I wasn’t used to. (By the way, I read an article about “Who’s ruining the English Language?” the other day. They said prepositions are fine to end sentences with. In this post I’m doing so with wild abandon.)
So last night, about ten-thirty or so, with my heart in my throat, I tried the spell-checker. It crashed the first time, but after that it worked fine. (I reported the crash to Apple. I did not report the crash to Bill, and I was right not to. ((Whee–the freedom of putting those prepositions wherever!))) If I run a grammar check on this note, the program will go nuts over all those parentheses. I can hardly wait to see what she’ll (Grammarians I know are usually female!) will say.
Then, when the spellcheck was finally completed, I ran a grammar check. I am happy to say that the new Pages program no longer sends out a sexist alarm every time the word husband or wife is used. Despite my care, the GC (short for grammar checker) discovered several instances of double words. Most of her whining was over M.E. vs ME for medical examiner and U.S. vs US Marshals Service. My publisher’s copy-editor is going to have to straighten that one out. And whenever I used the word “convince,” the grammar checker suggested “persuade.” (I believe I changed one but not the others–I was not persuaded.)
GC is convinced (not persuaded) that, whenever there is a quotation with a question within a sentence, that the whole thing should have a question mark at the end, as in: “She thinks that?” I said. “Really?” That doesn’t mean there should be a question mark after said!!!
Oh, and something else. GC believes sentence fragments are a no-no. The problem is, people speak in sentence fragments. All the time. In conversation. So all the flags on sentence fragments were ignored. And I also ignored the flags about starting sentences with conjunctions. And why not? (Oops. Another sentence fragment. Make that three.)
This morning, having dealt with grammatical rules for days on end, I’m having fun breaking them. Right and left.
As of 11:03, the corrected manuscript landed in my editor’s e-mail box.
Now we’ll see if she goes nuts.
Obviously I have.
Enjoy! My pet peeves are your/you’re and their/there/they’re. I notice that ly on adverbs is going the way of the dinosaur also.
It’s beyond me how you can keep all the names straight & remembered anyway with all the different books & characters you have.
I think it’s awesome that you keep up with this blog with all the writing you do already and I for one appreciate it.
Love all your books and have managed to read them all so far & look forward to your next release.
Have a wonderful & restful weekend!
Belinda
I agree, Belinda! Don’t think I’d be able to remember all the names and characters either!
What a wonderfully delightful fun and breezy look at grammar and spell checkers. It was fun to read the broken rules according to GC 😉 Thank you for sharing and I’m looking forward to another book. You are a joy to read and make me smile.
Ha! I hope you get to take a day or two off now, you sound as if you could use it! =D We’ll all be looking forward to the new book.
Like you, Judith, I have been held hostage to following grammar rules as drilled in by the nuns who taught me in elementary school. Years and years of diagramming sentences are still burned into my brain, not to mention knuckles being whacked for writing with the “wrong” hand.
As a high school teacher, all those rules seem to be out the window thanks to slang, urban, revised dictionaries, Wikipedia, etc. My students no longer know how to write in cursive. “Typed” up reports are created from using “copy and paste” features. They have no concept of correctly using footnotes.
I commend you for still trying to follow the “obsolete” command of the English language. This might sound a bit strange but of all the things that were drilled into my brain by my high school English teachers, the only one I remember is from Mrs. Specht and that was due to the angry drama she demonstrated in front of the entire class. She literally threw a spitting, hissy fit over the use of one particular word and any form of its tense. That word?– ‘Get’. To her, it was not a word and we were never to speak or use it in our assignments from that point forward. Guess who still refuses to use it in her writings– 🙂
Carry on and thanks for your continued weekly blogs. They are what set you apart from so many other great and popular writers/authors. Your connectivity with your readers/fans is truly appreciated.
You gave me quite a chuckle tonight. I’ve been battling with my GC the last couple days too. She hates it when I end a sentence with a preposition. It is so nice to hear someone of you caliber deals with the same grammar issue I (as a new author) does. Thanks for making me laugh. You are my fav.
Good grief, I shouldn’t write in the middle of the night. I meant to say, it is so nice to hear someone of your caliber deals with the same grammar issues I (as a new author) do.
NOT It is so nice to hear someone of you caliber deals with the same grammar issue I (as a new author) does.
My late father introduced me to Detective J.P. Beaumont several years ago – my family loves mysteries.
Dad was an attorney and law professor, and Mom taught French. So I had no choice with grammar – it had to be good, in English or Francais.
I have a pretty good grammar and spell checker in my head from life B.P.C. (Before Personal Computers), but I miss things when I’m tired. To, too and two come to mind right away.
Now, in life A.T. (After Tablets), I chuckle and sometimes curse at the things Autocorrect does to sentences. And God help you if you use quelques mots d’autre langue. I get real tired of all that red underlining.
Anyway, I promise to get back to Joanna Brady after I find out how Walt Longmire solves his latest problem. One challenge with a TV series shot outside its scripted location is that you may see things like cane cholla growing in Wyoming, where it’s never found.
(Looking at property on Albuquerque’s Bisbee Pl NW made me think of your books. Glad to see you still producing good ones.)
I ignore my GC when I use it which isn’t often. I use parts of sentences, too, which really annoys her.
I like the comments that mention a teacher. The teacher who had my class quaking was in 8th grade. A boy read a sentence and could not define a word. She read him the riot act and said we should look up a word we didn’t know as soon as we saw it. I keep a dictionary by my bed so I don’t have to get up when reading in bed. I can see her standing up in front of the class with a vein popping out in the middle of her forehead scolding us.
I turned my GC off. It knows less than I do, useless thing. I have found it possible to put oft-used words into spellchecker’s dictionary so it doesn’t underline them again and again and… Amazing how little SC knows, too, but I keep it to help me spell when old age fogs my brain. Thanks for your blog. Had me laughing. I have often said I should have a job proofreading books. I see every little mistake when reading. I cannot stop!
Josephine and others – For an entertaining story about a poor soul who reads books, finds errors and writes authors and editors about them, read Ruth Rendell’s “Piranha to Scurfy”. The title refers to a volume in a set of encyclopedias that comes in handy. He says he writes about the mistakes only so following editions will be corrected, but he has other problems.