Repeating - Anachronisms and “Almost Words”

(First posted following the 2011 release of Child of Desire)

Things that make me laugh while I’m reading a book include events and verbal expressions that are inappropriately placed in the time period of the novel and words that are misused. In the case of things associated with a particular time that have are in another time period, I always assume the author was so caught up in the story that stopping to research would have impeded the flow. However, when a word is used, apparently because it sounds much like the word intended, I’m just amused and guess that the author does not know better, and that the editor was “out to lunch,” so to speak.

Last week I read a best-selling book that had an example of the latter in the second sentence of the prologue. The author wrote, “He furls his brow…” It also stated that he does this “countless times each day.” Really? How does one furl his or her brow? Is this somewhat like furling a flag? I considered putting the book down after sentence two and not picking it back up. If the second sentence contained such a blatant error, how might the rest of the text insult my intelligence?

My editor should have been so lackadaisical! I was frequently required to defend occurrences and the existence of objects during the Great Depression and to support my claims with data. Yes, there were school buses in the 1920s. Yes, even young people who were poor graduated from high school. Yes, girls who were from wealthy families attended college. No, Hoovervilles did not exist in small towns and rural areas.

Much research can now be done online, but researching train schedules took me to the historical documents room of the public library where even my purse had to be left outside. And, yes, trains were the transportation of the day. The twenty-four hour, seven days per week schedule allowed for convenient local and nationwide travel.

I hope there are no “almost words” in my novel. But if you find one, please let me know so I can stress for the rest of my life because it’s out there for everyone to see, and there is nothing I can do to fix it. 

Oh, and if you are writing a book, you do need an editor. Invaluable!

 (Check out the "Novel" tab on this blog for information about Child of Desire.)

Is History Important?

Recently, I was made to wonder if ignorance concerning history is a handicap or if history just doesn’t matter. Should I be annoyed when a young person pretends to understand a period in history based on - well, I’m not sure what?

Case in point:  A college-educated young lady recently informed me that young people in the United States did not attend high school in the 1920’s and 30’s and that it would have been unusual for a young woman to attend college then. She also challenged my assertion that there were school busses during that period in time. 

Facts: In 1930, the year being discussed, 51% of U.S. teenagers, ages 14 – 17, were enrolled in high school and 667,000 of these young people completed high school that year. This same year, 48,869 women graduated from college (as compared to 73,615 men). And what about school busses?  The first school bus was horse-drawn and introduced in 1827. 

So does it matter that someone spouts “facts” that are not facts? Young people can multi-task electronically and beat the socks off of the majority of older people with relationship to technology. So, in my opinion, it does matter that said person did not use the internet and do exhaustive research before arguing opinion as fact.

The aforementioned young lady was challenging things in my book, implying that they were anachronisms. I went into defense mode, quoting my sources. The massive amount of research, done before the first words of my novel were written, made me confident that the fictional things in my story could have happened in fact. 

 “The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.” ~Aldous Huxley

Well, maybe.

1930’s School Bus – from “Old Bus”

Anachronisms and “Almost Words”

Things that make me laugh while I’m reading a book include events and verbal expressions that are inappropriately placed in the time period of the novel and words that are misused. In the case of things associated with a particular time that are placed in another time period, I always assume the author was so caught up in the story that stopping to research would have impeded the flow. However, when a word is used, apparently because it sounds much like the word intended, I’m just amused and guess that the author does not know better, and that the editor was “out to lunch,” so to speak.

Last week I read a best-selling book that had an example of the latter in the second sentence of the prologue. The author wrote, “He furls his brow…” It also stated that he does this "countless times each day." Really? How does one furl his or her brow? Is this somewhat like furling a flag? I considered putting the book down after sentence two and not picking it back up. If the second sentence contained such a blatant error, how might the rest of the text insult my intelligence?

My editor should have been so lackadaisical! I was frequently required to defend occurrences and the existence of objects during the Great Depression and to support my claims with data. Yes, there were school buses in the 1920's. Yes, even young people who were poor graduated from high school. Yes, girls who were from wealthy families attended college. No, Hoovervilles did not exist in small towns and rural areas.

Much research can now be done online, but researching train schedules took me to the historical documents room of the public library where even my purse had to be left outside. And, yes, trains were the transportation of the day. The twenty-four hour, seven days per week schedule allowed for convenient local and nationwide travel.

I hope there are no “almost words” in my novel. But if you find one, please let me know so I can stress for the rest of my life because it’s out there for everyone to see, and there is nothing I can do to fix it. 

Oh, and if you are writing a book, you do need an editor. Invaluable!

Check out the fourth tab at the top of this page for book information.