typo(t?)s

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly done with KoA, though not ready to join discussion yet... and Ghod! I have too many communities on line! But... I'm an inveterate and involuntary proofreader, and seeing a post called, iirc, "more typots", I thought I'd post this, probably already noticed:

P. 139, line 9, has "mosiacs" for "mosaics"

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody

Comments

[rowana.livejournal.com]

Hi. :) I hope you manage to finish KoA soon and join us. And yes, there was a 'More Typots' post a while ago, but that was mostly about the typos that we always end up making in the chat room (including the typo in which 'typo' became 'typot', and stuck). :)

I hadn't noticed the typo in KoA, which shows that I haven't been reading closely enough. I've noever spotted any mistakes in MWT's books before, which is odd, because you usually get at least a few.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I just started my first reread and saw the following "braino" on page 21, second paragraph, last sentence:

... Being attacked by his own Guard was not something the queen could fail to overlook.

Read that sentence carefully. The "not" and the negation implicit in "fail to" cancel each other out, leaving the sense of, approximately,

... Being attacked by his own Guard was something the queen could overlook.

It looks as if Megan was thinking of "... was not something the queen could overlook" and "... was something the queen could not fail to notice" or "... to take official notice of", and landed halfway between them. Not to mention the dangling modifier: the queen was not attacked by his own Guard.

(I'm glad you like my self-assumed title. It took me a while to come up with the right rhythm. I've been using it for 20 years or more.)

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

Wow, I never notice things like that... but then again, I hate grammar. I guess that's not great, considering I want to publish a book. ^_^' Ah well.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Actually, as I realized later, it's a dangling participle but not a dangling modifier. "Being attacked by his own Guard" is a noun clause functioning as the subject of the sentence. But it's still dangling; it should be something like "The king's being attacked by his own guard was not something the queen could overlook."

[empmai.livejournal.com]

Yea, but good grammer doesn't always make for good reading.

So question is, how does the inclusion of inproper grammer reflect the story and tone when reading the story? Does the dangling grammer imposse upon us to read between the lines? Or does it have any other effct upon the rading of the sentence?

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Well, please remember that I'm not offering that as THE correction. It is awkward.

Do mispelngs and typots effect ur understandg f a paragrph?

I'm not trying to mock you, empmai, but the five spelling mistakes in your second paragraph (one occurring twice) certainly did get in my way in reading your post. Some grammatical and vocabulary oddities that may just be conversational (but I'm hypersensitized in this thread), or, possibly, the writing of a non-native speaker, also balked me a bit.

I could go on at length about the value of editing in general, but instead I'll refer you to a song: Editors' Waltz (http://filk.cracksandshards.com/EditorsWaltz.html).

[empmai.livejournal.com]

Oh no dear, sorry, you misunderstood me. Though I'm sure it was not overly hard to do with all my typots ;) I was not negating anything you said, I too believe in the value of editing - just not my own work :)

I was only simply starting a question on how the use of, or lack of, grammar effects the tone of a story. I don't have my copy on hand, but I believe the narrator of the KoA was Costis narrating first-hand rather than an omniscient narrator. If that is the case, does the grammatical use have any effect on our interpretation of the Costis personality? i.e., If the narrator was the Magnus first hand, I would expect a perfect scholarly grammatical tone, but a farm boy, in an ancient society, would likely not have more than a rudimentary education that included reading and writing, but not extensive grammar.

And nope, completely native-English speaker. Though concerning the mosaic typo, I did notice it when reading, but just thought I had been spelling it wrong all these years :)

-EmpMai,
who, alas, will never be able to add 'grammatical authority' to her title but perhaps may someday add 'grammatical inventor' - though likely all will end up in Titivillus's sack with Webster's Iz and tung, but who knows, Logic's K eventually ended up there too.

My biggest grammatic tiff with historic/fantasy writers are those who use 'ye' incorrectly.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I would never have noticed that on my own. I did come across a funny typot in the advance copy os KoA. Instead of "Aulus and Boagus" it says "Aulus and Bob". It made me wonder if Megan had a random working name of Bob until she thought of a good name for him and it didn't get changed, or if it was just an error. No idea, but it did make me chuckle the first time I read it.

That's quite a title you have, Doctor. :)

[empmai.livejournal.com]

Aulus and Bob".

*laughs*