One word is ruining my book

[Lifenov86]

I’m reading the new cj Tudor book “serenity falls”. Really enjoying the story. My problem! No one walks anywhere they “pad”. It’s so jarring once you notice it

I suspect as authors get more popular a) editors know it will sell hugely and get lazy, and b) authors have more power and say over the editing.

as well as scarpetta which I’ve mentioned -hi @MrsDanversGlidesAgain another is Harry Potter. The first 3/4 books are slim, tightly edited, and extraneous crap cut out. Then after they really take off the books get 4 inches thick - or too big for one book as in the final year. Lots of storytelling that could probably have been pared down…

I also hate it when a character’s physical feature is mentioned eleventy billion times in a book.

She crossed her shapely legs.
Her shapely legs were tanned.

His red hair made him easy to spot.
He brushed his red hair.

You only need to mention it once, OK!!!

Female friends/sisters in Austen's novels often go to the shrubbery for intercourse, as I recall.

Sometimes American English does use older versions of words. Remember

Here comes a candle to light you to bed

from Oranges and Lemons.

I read a book by an American author, set in London. The characters never go to a shop or food shopping, they go marketing. It's really jarring.

Preternatural drives me bananas

But here ‘light’ is not past tense, ‘lit’; it’s present tense and used to mean ‘to produce a light for someone so they can see where they are going’.

OMG. I’m the same with ‘grin’. It’s awful. I read a book recently which was littered with it and kept imagining the character grinning like the Joker.

There are other examples : Americans would write 'smelled', English - 'smelt', etc.

Any term like that is annoying if used repeatedly and unnecessary. Any number of 'saids' is OK but more than a couple of 'breatheds' irritates.

Not necessarily! That’s a common misconception. Both smelled and smelt are accepted in British English, along with learned/t, dreamed/t, spoiled/t, leaned/t, leaped/t, etc.

And both -ise and -ize verb forms are accepted in British English, so organise, organize, etc.

Men who 'growl' during sex......really off putting! Also characters who 'grind out' phrases.
Yuck.
Pad is very annoying!

Some expressions I've noticed in repeat lately in different books are
"...nursing her coffee/drink"
"Monday morning found her.. "

I also hate "pad" - it realy annoys me.

Worse than that though is when an author wants to show that a character was surprised or shocked by something and says something like:
"her mouth made a round o"

I agree with the "raise an eyebrow" one. I've only known one person in my whole life who could do that and yet characters are doing it left, right and centre.

"For" instead of "because" pisses me off sometimes. It has its place but it is old-fashioned and quite often when it is used in contemporary novels it sounds out of place and is jarring. It always makes me think the author is trying to hard to be sophisticated.

I'm reading a book where the protagonist keeps chewing her fingers when she's worried. I'm constantly distracted by picturing how horrible her fingers must look.

I remember Catherine Cookson books always had hunkers and oxters. Every single one.

I have a quite old book about the home front in Britain during the war. It describes how there was some sniggering when the British press reported that Mrs Roosevelt had come to Britain to have intercourse with American troops stationed here.

I must stop reading this and jump out of bed with great alacrity .

The word jarring has been overused in this thread 🤣

Stepping foot is a pet hate of mine, too. I thought I was the only one. Same with ‘unchartered territory’. No, no, no - they mean it has not yet been mapped, hence ‘uncharted’. Arrgh.

@Lifenov86 agree 100%, pad is a cringe worthy word and I wish it could be eradicated. Unless by a cat, they do, in fact, pad.

Agree about the Americanisms!

In Fates and Furies, an apparently British character is talking about (British) football and it’s so jarring that it took me out of the story completely. Apparently the character was a Spurs fan but referred to them I think as Tottenham Hotspur and ‘our boys’, like he was a 1940s army general or something.

I thought that, but then in Georgette Heyer’s books, written around the 1950s, she also has characters going ‘marketing’ so I think it’s one of those words that kept its old usage in the US but changed here.

Oh yes, and for the duration of the Tilly Trotter series the character repeatedly 'swallowed her spittle'. Over and over again, for three books, it was revolting.

I love Sophie Kinsella's books, and am so sad to hear she died, both for for her/her family and selfishly because I would have liked an infinite stream of her stories. That being said it drives me bonkers the way her characters constantly mirror back what's said to them!!

Character A: 'i live in London'

Character B: 'You live in London?'

Character A: 'I share a flat with my roommate'

Character B: 'Share a flat?'

Constantly, all of them, not just one character with a quirk. I swear if all that repetition was edited out the books would shrink by a third!