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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

I Know an Editor Who Needs A New Profession

I love to read, so when I found myself in a school library to help with student testing, I looked through the books to find a quick read I might enjoy. I found one (which shall remain nameless) and began reading ... and was really surprised at some of the sentence structure and wording. I waited for the kids to go home for the day (no camera's allowed during testing!) and took pictures of a few of the things that left me scratching my head. I only document a few here, but there were many, many more. The story itself was actually quite clever ... and I couldn't help but wonder how so many blunders made it through the editorial process of a major publishing house.

Is it just me, or is it troubling that the editor/proofreader(s) didn't find fault with these? (My snarky comments are below the snippets in red.)

No grammatical error, per se ...
but that's your best description of a headache? Really?!
I believe Reeve was MORE HANDSOME, not HANDSOMER.
Three words ...
Worst. Metaphor. EVER!
Um ... I hate to tell you, but Mirriam-Webster says SPROING
(and therefore, SPROINGED) is not a word.
P.S. Yes, I realize I do not always follow proper sentence structure, and I've been known to use the word "ain't" or "funner" in my blog ... but I think a book specifically geared toward children to ignite their love of reading should also teach them proper English. And, it's okay to make up a word (like "sproing") ... but you can only do so when a character is using the word. You can't make up a word to use as a description!

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