"Neither of them said nothing." From SAFE HAVEN, by Nicholas Sparks.

[raccoon]

What's wrong with publishers nowadays--with the job market as sucky as it is, they could probably find people with Ph. D.'s in English who'd jump at the chance to get a job as a proofreader/editor.

[Orrex]

1. What I like about your post is the context

:evilgrin:

I have no idea of how "Neither of them said nothing" is used on the page, so I have no way to assess whether it's a good usage or bad.

[raccoon]

2. Double negative. nt

[Orrex]

3. Yeah, but...

Is it dialogue? Is it a function of the narrative voice? What's the context?

[raccoon]

4. The narrative voice. If someone has access to the book, maybe

they could shed more light on it.

[Orrex]

6. Well, do you have access to the book?

Why be so deliberately cryptic?

[raccoon]

10. No. nt

[Orrex]

15. So what's the source of your outrage?

You don't have access to the book, and you're complaining about the narrative voice?

To what purpose?

[PVnRT]

9. C'mon, it's Nicky Spark

I'm sure it was a weighty goodbye scene, where the poor, pitiful woman is about to lose her man forever, and she will be forever lost, pining for her lost love, et cetera.

[raccoon]

5. What I don't like about your post

is your sarcasm.

[Orrex]

7. In fairness, that could be said about most of my posts

Nature of the beast, as they say.

[hedgehog]

8. I think a lot of books by popular authors go directly from personal

computer to the printing press. I've noticed paragraphs on one page repeated several pages later - obviously the author moved the paragraph but forgot to delete it from it's original spot. I've also seen character's ages jump and minor characters go through a name change.

[raccoon]

11. I think you've probably got that right. nt

[AngryOldDem]

12. This has been a huge pet peeve of mine for awhile now.

I'm a proofreader. It galls me to no end to see spelling mistakes and other errors throughout books, and that seems to be more the rule than the exception anymore. A glaring example is Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big To Fail." Whole (and LONG) paragraphs were copied and pasted in that book, rather than copied and cut. So on page 205 you'd see a graph that was on 201. Second references with no first references were common.

It is especially galling in cookbooks. I have a cookbook that mentions ingredients in the list, but not in the instructions, and vice versa.

I can excuse the occasional error because God knows I've made plenty in my career as an editor/proofreader. But books are so sloppily edited these days that I can only chalk it up to laziness, and an overreliance on spellcheck.

And here's another beef: Poor binding on new books. More often than not when I read a brand new book the binding cracks and chunks of pages threaten to fall out. I treat books like gold so it's not me. It's the piss-poor glue (or whatever) used on the spine.

[WinkyDink]

13. Grammatical correctness isn't required in fiction. It depends on the "voice."

[lukasahero]

14. I recommend you never read any Mark Twain

I am in no way comparing the quality of craft between the two but proper grammar is often eschewed to impose a particular narrative voice. :shrug: