Research and Word Choices

Things that make me laugh while I’m reading a book include events and verbal expressions inappropriately placed in a time period and words that are misused. When events or expressions are not appropriate to the time period, I assume the author was too caught up in the story to recognize the need for research. However, when a wrong word choice is made, usually one that sounds much like the intended word, I guess that the author does not know better and the editor was “out to lunch,” so to speak. 

A while back, 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? 

Only a couple of months after reading the previously mentioned book, another book on the list of best sellers presented me with a line taken from a TV commercial. Problem? The commercial was made after the historical timeline of the story.

If my editor had been as lackadaisical as it appears some may be, I would not have been required to defend occurrences as being time period appropriate or to prove the existence of objects during the Great Depression. My word that something was correct meant nothing to Ms. Particular Editor. Every response to a challenge had to be supported 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 during the Great Depression. 

Much research can now be done online, but some things still need to be researched in document collections. While I was writing Child of Desire,I needed to locate accurate schedules for Colorado passenger train lines in the 1930’s. So, I visited the historical documents room of my public library. The documents there are considered so valuable that nothing can be carried into the room by a researcher. After several hours of searching, I walked out with copies of the information I needed to assure that a travel event in the story would be historically accurate. 

I really hope there are no “almost words” in my novel. But if you find one, please let me know so I can stress about it for the rest of my life.

Colorado Spring, CO, original Carnegie Library which now houses the historical documents collection. The new library is attached to this building.

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”