Important book related pedant question - any takers?!

[janeite]

I have noticed recently that more and more authors seem to have a real inability to use semi-colons, so that their writing is made up of long sentences joined together by commas and therefore very tedious and rather off-putting to read.

Justine Picardie's 'Daphne' is one example - totally unreadable for the reason above.

I'm now reading 'When Will There Be Good News?' and finding it is doing the same thing. I'm quite enjoying the story but the misplaced commas are driving me batty.

Am I being unreasonable?!

[squeaver]

I was put off Daphne for exactly the same reason, janeite. I wonder if the problem is with the writers or the editors?

[janeite]

I get the impression that not a great deal of editing goes on nowadays, unless some of these books were even more badly written beforehand?

[PadDad]

You asked for pedants, so:

Your thread title should have a hyphen.

It's "book-related", not "book related".

[thumbwitch]

at PadDad.

Too many people these days seem to be scared of semi-colons; and too many people use them instead of colons, which is infinitely more annoying than not using them at all, imo.

I do get the general impression that the people who proofread a lot of books these days suffer from a lack of good English.

However, I have also noticed that some authors have a distressing habit of using the same phrases over and over until I am biting the book cover in frustration when I see one being repeated AGAIN. And there is a lot of mis-spelling of words that doesn't seem to get picked up.

[BitOfFun]

@ PadDad

When Will There Be Good News is a good read though, give it a chance!

[scottishmummy]

bog off you understood enough to reply,flex your punctuation muscle elsewhere

it is really arsey to to crow about an understandable post just because to be picky

[thumbwitch]

Another point: I was involved in the editing of a professional journal a few years ago, that was sent out to a publishing company. They would "typeset" it and return it to me for copy-proofing and over and over I would have to put in a comment such as "remove extraneous comma".

In the end I asked the girl who was sending me the stuff if she was using the Microsoft Word Spell and Grammar check - she admitted she was - I asked her to refrain, as it was considerably less competent than I was to decide where commas were appropriate. Honestly.

So maybe it is over-use of the microsoft grammar check that adds to the misery of misplaced commas these days! (plus I don't think microsoft have heard of semi-colons...)

[PadDad]

Fair enough; I'll bog off.

I'd only type something like that on a pedant-related thread, as I find the whole pedantry thing amusing, rather than aggravating.

But I can see it read as arsey, rather than funny (which was my intention), so I'm sorry.

Off I'll bog . . .

[thumbwitch]

it was funny PadDad - that's why you got snurked and snorted at.

[PadDad]

Thanks thumbwitch. I've always liked you.

[BecauseImWorthIt]

I always think that the minute someone types 'pedant' in their OP that it's an open invitation!

[janeite]

Ooh get me with the missing hyphen! You are right, of course and I bow down to you in humble homage.

Seriously though - I do think the semi-colon seems to be dying out.

I finished 'When Will There Be Good News?' last night. I thought it was okay but not great: rather too contrived and the DI (is it Louise?) irritates me.

Thumbwitch - good point about the repetition of ain phrases too. Do you want to name and shame?

[janeite]

I meant 'certain phrases' - my keyboard really is being weird!

[thumbwitch]

aw shucks, PadDad, s'nice of you to say so!

janeite - a couple that spring immediately to mind that pee me off intensely are:
"slicking on her lipstick" - it's not crude oil, fgs! Crops up in far too many books, admittedly mostly of the chicklit variety (I know, so what do I expect, they're not exactly Booker prize material )
early Terry Pratchett - the only noise of anguish that could be made was screaming - the main character screamed a lot; he could have yelled, yelped, squawked, cried out, screeched, or any number of other synonyms - but he had to scream. By the end of it, so did I.(TP got better by book 5 - he'd obviously acquired a thesaurus by then!)

There are others, and no doubt more highbrow literary ones too, but these are the ones that stick in my head.

[janeite]

;) Yes: you are very right about Terry Pratchett! And that sounds just like him! I must admit I do quite like him though (although he'd have been a better writer if he'd written fewer books methinks).

'Slicking on her lipstick' - ugh - that is revolting!

[janeite]

Oops - that was meant to be a smile: I have semi-colon-itis and pressed it instead of the colon!

[fishie]

it's the editors' responsibility. email the publishers, tell them.

[madlentileater]

there was a whole feature on the Today programme this week about semi colons.
You could probably Listen Again if you wanted.
John Humphreys very pro the semi colon, you will not be surprised to learn. Also last week a feature in the Grauniad about exclamation marks and reasons for their over use in emails!!!
Or other new forms of text-based communication!!
Apparently a female trait.

[Nighbynight]

I would find this very annoying, and wouldnt read books by such a mediocre author. Unless they were trying to make a point like GBS of course.

[janeite]

Re: over-use of exclamation marks - I blame the primary strategy/Big Writing for that. Teachers encouraging children to use them so they can be ticked for L3 punctuation, or whatever it is. Then they come to secondary and we have to teach them to be much more sparing in their usage.

It's a shame re: the semi-colon thing because actually, other than that, these authors aren't bad but just long streams of sentences connected by badly used commas just make them annoying to read. At times, it just feels relentless and you're gagging for a pause.

[MissClavel]

I'm so glad someone else feels like that about Kate Atkinson. I found When Will There etc almost impossible to read because of this - she kept on and on using commas when a bigger break was needed. A full stop would have done the job a lot of the time, it was horrible.
(that last sentence being an example).

Haven't noticed it so much with other writers but I do agree about phrases being overused. Chick lit heroines (I know, I know) seem never to go out without a hat at a jaunty angle, and Douglas Kennedy infuriated the pedant within me by making his main character notice 'the telltale click' of a door unlocking when he punched in the code, about 3000 times in his last book.

Right, that's off my chest, I'll do the ironing now.

[FredWorm]

I've just finished 'When Will ...' and I didn't have that problem at all. The style is informal and slightly chaotic of course. That's because she is writing within the mental states of a range of stressed and hurt characters -- people who are rushing about more-or-less comically trying to mend themselves.

And I don't imagine that it is the editor's job to tamper systematically with a respected fiction writer's style of comma use. The odd slip would be changed, but anything more pervasive would need to go back to the writer I would think.

[policywonk]

Can I ask what sort of semi-colon misuse/absence we are talking about here? The lack of a semi-colon to separate two clauses, each of which would stand on their own as a full sentence? Or something less easily defined?

[FredWorm]

I am fighting the urge to go and ge tthe book to do a comma analysis.

I tend only to impose the semi-colon in cases where there are several components in a sentence, each of which is already articulated into sub-components by commas. So the semi-colon is a kind of higher-order articulation.

It is rather formal, and I woul;dn't be surprised if a fiction writer eschewed it deliberately in order to reduce the formality of a passage that was conveying a less-then-limpid state of mind. As I recall, 'When Will ...' retains the third-person perspective whilst giving an account from within a character's shockingly imperfect self-perception. The slightly chaotic, tumbling effect of 'improperly' articulated sentences might help the effect?

[FredWorm]

Writing quickly and imperfectly myself, without any literary intention.