I've always been good at spelling. When I was in grammar school, whenever my teacher uttered the words, "Spelling Bee," my classmates cringed but I clapped my hands with glee. I even came in second place in my school's Spelling Bee when I was in 6th grade.
Needless to say, bad spelling is one of my pet peeves.
Grammar, on the other hand, is one of my biggest weaknesses. I'm constantly re-learning what I apparently never absorbed in my younger years. Passive voice is my Achilles heel but I'm trying.
I realize it's so much easier to find errors in other people's work than finding it in my own. (which is why I rely so heavily on my BWFF and my critique group.) I've looked back on blog posts and manuscripts and feel utter embarrassment when I notice an error.
So, late at night, when I hunker down on my sofa to read, it kind of irks me whenever I catch errors in a published book. Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect by any means. Nor do I have any published novels. Heck, I can't even convince an agent to read three chapters but I would have thought that somewhere along the chain of people between the author and the printer the mistakes would have been spotted.
Are any of you bothered by spelling and grammar errors? Or am I just being anal?
Oh my gosh, this drives me CRAZY. Especially in advertisements. It actually does make me reconsider buying a product-- if you're not careful enough to check your ads for errors, why would I trust that you'd be careful enough to make a good product? So glad I'm not the only one who finds this to be a really irksome issue!
ReplyDeleteI am SUCH a spell-checker. I can spell nearly anything - I'm actually the "dictionary" at home, when people ask how things are spelled - so incorrectly spelled words drive me utterly over the wall. Come on, peeps, get a dictionary! Check your words! 'Specially if the book's going through that many layers to publication. Ya know?
ReplyDeleteI was really worried about posting this. I didn't want to offend anyone because as we all know, mistakes happen but I have since read two other blog posts about this subject.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting ladies, I'm happy to know I'm not alone in this.