To get annoyed by a badly written novel with serious factual mistakes

[PhaedraIsMyName]

Author thinks the witness to a crime can decide who the Crown calls as expert witness.

Expert witness is a therapist who was treating the witness to the crime. Expert witness is married to a lawyer. Expert witness has been discussing the background with lawyer husband. The person accused of the crime is the crime scene witness'father. Author thinks the lawyer husband can represent the accused and this is not a conflict.

Lawyer husband is actually employed in a government legal department and author thinks lawyer husband can, whilst still employed, act as a defence lawyer.

It's tosh. Did nobody bother to edit or proof read it?

Is it just me who bothers about stuff like this?

'Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen appearances were mending; she began to cut her hair and long for balls.' - Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen.

AshaH1982

I'm sure you know fine well that Jane Austen was talking about dances

IceBeing, I think my favourite is on a far smaller scale -- two people sharing a keyboard on NCIS as described by Cracked.

Although now that I read that article again it has some stiff competition...

I suffer brain blat when I read (and watch) books and films with miracle psych drugs that work immediately on struggling, distressed patients.

And YY to the poster who mentioned defib being done on Asystole patients. I know that sometimes fine ventricular fib looks like asystole but do you ever see them confirming this via a lead? NO!

There's a great blog somewhere that analyses each episode of House listing all the medical errors.

I was the first poster to mention zippers, and I am American. i think some others may have used the word when referring to my post.

As to ass, etc. The functional equivalent to "bum" in the US is "butt." "Ass" is considered ruder than "butt." There may be regional differences I'm not aware of, but generally speaking, for example, a child might get away with saying "butt" at school, but probably not "ass." And "ass" can have sexual overtones as well.

Tortoise

I can imagine how many hours of my day I would lose if I found that . I am terrible for moaning about their inability to research medical matter.s I accept that protocols change but the symptoms and body parts do not, nor do drugs work in mysterious ways unknown to us!

tortoise thank you for that - have been laughing like a drain and startling my co-workers.

Oh yeah I forgot about "Butt"

I'd still say that "ass" is less rude than "arse." Also "crap" seems to be less rude in the US than it is here. But bugger is ruder here.

No better way to while away a sunny afternoon than to be discussing swearwords on the internet.

I wonder if Ayla can have both her nipples licked at once LRD .

I am going to award the prize to stargate though...because it takes a special effort to bother enough to come up with the idea of an EMP and then get it so horribly horribly wrong on so many counts.

Bum is becoming a bit more common in the US. There is a toilet paper ad on TV now with a British woman talking about keeping your bum clean, and also one with bears talking about bums.

The only reason bugger is not rude in the US is that people don't know what it means. Same with bollocks.

Quote please Kate!

teach the local children to sing "the lovely German hymn, O Tannenbaum" at the funeral

I did go to a wedding once where they had Abide with me as one of the hymns

Mine is from a Kay Scarpetta novel. Her niece is a top undercover CIA agent in Germany who passes for a native. At one point she says three words in German, "du dumm Narr". Four mistakes in three words, impressive

MarrogfromMars
Can I just say how much I love this thread? Visions of hundreds of MNers nodding along to erudite historical facts one minute and thoughtfully squashing their breasts together the next

Ditto, great thread, wish I wasn't so late to it!

Scrambledsmegs love it - similarly DH's big bugbear on films is temporal/geographical continuity - he always knows where he is and what time it is from the position of the sun in the sky, and gets very frustrated when one minute they are travelling west at 3pm, and the next east at 12pm. Meg Ryan films seem to be particularly bad at this, for some reason. Your Wimbledon eg would definitely give him The Rage

I'd put 'ass' in the same category as 'damn' in the US, which would make it a mid-level swear - worse than 'crap' but not as bad as 'shit', if you see what I mean.
One thing I find amusing is that I've met quite a few people who say 'arse' when they're trying to be a bit polite. Obviously because anything said in a 'British' accent is automatically classier.

Speaking of accents, there's a generic "American" accent used by a lot of non-American actors - it seems like Australians are the worst for it, but I've heard it from Europeans as well - that makes me want to rip my ears off. It's only just far enough 'off' that you think you can relax, and then it hits you again.

Jean Auel's books are well researched. It's just a shame that they otherwise tend to read like bad fanfiction.

Older British sitcoms are bad for getting American accents wrong. It's the over done rhotic "r" that gives it away every time.

the conjoined incestuous twins of different sexes

They crop up in the annoying indie film My life without me too. Did my head right in.

Choosandchips' post reminds me of something mildly irritating in Four Weddings and a Funeral. It always bothers me that Carrie and Hamish are getting married in the Scottish Highlands in the summer at night, and it is dark.

This is a good 'un, from Peter James's Not dead enough:

"He pulled the silky garment off her shoulders and buried his mouth into her soft neck, as she took him in her lips, deeply, all the way down the shaft"

Whoever had the book before me has underlined it and written "what, at the same time?!" in the margin