picking out the math, spelling and grammatical errors of others is a guilty yet strangely satisfying sweet. Even more so when the errors are those of the ink stained set - who are supposedly getting paid buckets of ducats to avoid just those sorts of mistakes. So whenever i encounter the conjunction of an obvious error and the means to provide the author or editor 'helpful feedback' my digits begin to twitch crazedly over the keyboard. to whit - the Guardian Review in a piece responding to the announcement of the Orange Prize shortlist this week asked sixteen authors to comment on their favourite picture from a new book, Reading Women. Now, I haven't read the piece enough to comment on the content - but my eye was immediately caught by the following sentence by AL Kennedy regarding Théodore Roussel's painting The Reading Girl (actually his model and lover Hetty Pettigrew)
'You shouldn't risk reading naked. You don't want someone else's words getting on your skin, lodged in those little crannies where they'll stick and pray on your mind, your sense.'Aha! Well I immediately found the feedback form for the books editor and suggested that as much as i have often been tempted to pray on the mind of a naked woman (reading or not) that perhaps they had actually intended 'prey'. Not that I care what they 'right' - but an opportunity to point out the mistakes of the scribbling class is one that i try never to forsake...
Yea, don't I know it. Grammar Nazi. Hey, she's, like, Heiss!
Posted by: Mike | 03 May 2006 at 17:45