Inaccuracies in fiction

Agree I always feel so let down by lazy mistakes. If the author can't remember the name or backstory of a minor character, why should I? And if you are setting your novel in a historical era, then fgs make the language accurate. And consistent within the book.

The phrase about the village being 2 miles away wouldn’t bother me at all. It’s actually our corporate style that we write numbers as numbers so I’m used to it.

Following on from the sheep apparently in a courtroom, I read a book ages ago in which crowds always disbursed. Can't remember the book unfortunately.

Swallows could perch on the branches of an oak tree though, surely?

I see your point about 'two'.

The corporation garbage dump, whilst punting, in Gaudy Night.

It is also in the kindle edition as that, so I actually assumed that was original. DLS was cohabiting with an American at some point, I think?

I will check my mum’s original print version when I’m next visiting 😀

There is no link other than two
errors in the same chapter. Swallows don't nest in trees the it should have been 'two' not '2'.

I don't understand the link?

I don’t really mind the “there’s no Waitrose there!” things - I mean, you’re reading fiction anyway. It’s stuff like an RAF pilot in the war saying “YOLO!!” that annoys me.

Even if an author meticulously researched a place, places change, buildings get knocked down…

@QueenCarrot Yes, that was what I had thought when referring to a shingle beach, that it was singular rather than plural. Also a short haircut from the twenties!

Plaintiff moans though

Weyward has been mentioned a few times. I started it on Sunday and yesterday read "Kate shuts the front door and swallows burst from the old oak in the front garden." Two sentences later I find "The village is just 2 miles away." I haven't picked it up since.

From my childhood in the fifties I remember a lot of older people who swam sidestroke, so could be that?
I also think garbage is plausible in the Wimsey text; 'you are talking utter garbage" has certainly been around a long time and the origin of the word is apparently Anglo-Norman French, though originally food waste.

We used to say “sitting on the shingles” or “up on the shingles” all the time round my way when I was a kid, we lived near Chesil beach. So I think it’s a common phrase.

But then it would be shingle. Shingles is the disease. Or possibly roofing, though we would usually call them tiles in the UK.

Obviously no excuse for the sheep unless it’s in a courtroom, but a shingle beach is another phrasing for a pebble beach so that’s not incorrect.

An error that received alot of publicity was from Richard Osmans novel. He set a scene in Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells - it doesn’t have one!

But it ought to have! If you were going to suggest a supermarket where a stereotypical hypothetical Tunbridge Wells resident would shop, it would be Waitrose!

But errors like this are annoying when these things are so easily checked these days.

There’s one in Tonbridge! Come on, that’s close enough

An error that received alot of publicity was from Richard Osmans novel. He set a scene in Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells - it doesn’t have one!

Treaclewell Maybe the ground squirrel that was used to make umpteen meals was related to the fabled Mumsnet chicken.

I am definitely going to try it next time I’m in a pool and it’s relatively quiet

Old English backstroke sounds a lot more difficult than the version we currently have - not surprised it isn’t used any more

I actually use this stroke quite a lot. Just comes naturally to me. I realise I'm a bit of an outlier with this and DH always takes the piss. Ironically I represented our swimming club at backstroke (the modern one).

Can't imagine anyone writing a book set in my town now (although I assumed Girl on a Train was my local trainline until she started naming towns which threw me).

Us Three by Ruth Jones was quite enjoyable until the story moved to Guildford and it was completely unlike the Guildford I'd lived in during the same period. No idea why she did that.

Interesting!

Old English backstroke sounds a lot more difficult than the version we currently have - not surprised it isn’t used any more

The backstroke would have been old English backstroke with breaststroke legs and both arms turning together.

The crawl is very modern, the Native Americans did the crawl arms but I think the crawl legs came from the Australian Aborigines. And butterfly is the most modern and is a variation of the breaststroke.

Well, I learned something from this. I didn't know that the crawl was a relatively recent development in Europe. I remember from history that King Charles II swam in the Thames nearly every day for exercise. So he would have been doing the breaststroke or backstroke?

I just read a book where one character, who is a teacher in London tells her friends that to become a teacher she just needs basic gcse english and maths. It really annoyed me.