Important book related pedant question - any takers?!

29 replies

janeite · 02/05/2009 13:52

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?!

OP posts:

thumbwitch · 03/05/2009 00:57

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.

PadDad · 03/05/2009 00:50

You asked for pedants, so:

Your thread title should have a hyphen.

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

Original poster

janeite · 02/05/2009 13:56

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?

OP posts:

squeaver · 02/05/2009 13:54

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

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