Great Idea; Irritating Execution
I stumbled across an article that made me think -- "Oh my GOD, why didn't I do this????"
Two young men went on a road trip to correct the grammatical errors in signs across America. And they wrote a book about it. What a fabulous idea. Honestly, I want to go out on my own trip now, except of course this has already been done. Story of my life.
After I got over my bitterness at What Could Have Been... I read an excerpt from the book.
The writing is... oh, it's AWFUL. Oh, of course it's flawless grammatically! Somebody joked that it had to have been the most carefully-proofread book in the history of publishing. Unfortunately, it's also pretentious, smug, and not at all funny.
Sadly, I can tell what the author was going for. It's a ridiculous task, really; it's like Don Quixote walking around with a red pen instead of a sword. An Impossible Dream, to correct every single sign put together by thousands of functionally-illiterate people who obviously slept through their high school English classes.
(I think that's one of the things that offends me so deeply about the sloppily-written English that I see everywhere. I have forgotten everything that I ever learned about trigonometry because I simply don't use any of it in my daily life. It's the Use it or Lose it thing. But most of us use the written word every single day. At the very least, we are exposed to it; text is everywhere, thanks (I guess) to advertising. Even if you stay in your house all day long, there's even text on your television. About the only way to avoid the written word is to stay at home and listen to the radio. We have no excuse. It's pure laziness or apathy.)
It's a nerdy task. It's a task that honestly, the way this country seems to work, is a little impractical and self-indulgent. It's... kind of silly. This could have been comedy gold. I can almost see a character from "Seinfeld" doing this. Or Lewis Black! Oh I'll just bet that poorly-composed signs make him nuts. So the author tried to write in a kind of epic style (the word "quest" was used) but instead of going far enough to make it funny, just comes across as condescending and smug and really self-indulgent. I think the only way that could have worked as humor would be to really take it over the top. Unfortunately the author seems to want you to know that he knows how silly this is... there's too much ego to just go wholeheartedly into goofiness like say, a character out of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Oh, can't you just picture John Cleese playing a red pen-wielding Don Quixote-style editor running around? That would be so awesome.
Look, NOBODY likes editors. I've been an editor, I know this. People see editors and proofreaders as humorless, obsessive, snotty nitpickers who don't appreciate the hard work that writers put into their work (we do) and focus only on little mistakes. (um... that's our JOB)
This book is not going to sell. Obviously the topic is not exactly accessible unless you are a grammar nerd. And there's no real humor in it to attract any readers who aren't grammar nerds -- i.e. most of the public.
Honestly, I hope it doesn't sell. Not because I'm bitter and I want these guys to fail, but because the more people read the book the more it will keep alive the idea that editors and grammar nerds are unlikeable people who think they're better than everyone else. We don't. We just wish they'd use it's/its correctly. Please. Before our heads explode.
Article and excerpt from The Great Typo Hunt.
Two young men went on a road trip to correct the grammatical errors in signs across America. And they wrote a book about it. What a fabulous idea. Honestly, I want to go out on my own trip now, except of course this has already been done. Story of my life.
After I got over my bitterness at What Could Have Been... I read an excerpt from the book.
The writing is... oh, it's AWFUL. Oh, of course it's flawless grammatically! Somebody joked that it had to have been the most carefully-proofread book in the history of publishing. Unfortunately, it's also pretentious, smug, and not at all funny.
Sadly, I can tell what the author was going for. It's a ridiculous task, really; it's like Don Quixote walking around with a red pen instead of a sword. An Impossible Dream, to correct every single sign put together by thousands of functionally-illiterate people who obviously slept through their high school English classes.
(I think that's one of the things that offends me so deeply about the sloppily-written English that I see everywhere. I have forgotten everything that I ever learned about trigonometry because I simply don't use any of it in my daily life. It's the Use it or Lose it thing. But most of us use the written word every single day. At the very least, we are exposed to it; text is everywhere, thanks (I guess) to advertising. Even if you stay in your house all day long, there's even text on your television. About the only way to avoid the written word is to stay at home and listen to the radio. We have no excuse. It's pure laziness or apathy.)
It's a nerdy task. It's a task that honestly, the way this country seems to work, is a little impractical and self-indulgent. It's... kind of silly. This could have been comedy gold. I can almost see a character from "Seinfeld" doing this. Or Lewis Black! Oh I'll just bet that poorly-composed signs make him nuts. So the author tried to write in a kind of epic style (the word "quest" was used) but instead of going far enough to make it funny, just comes across as condescending and smug and really self-indulgent. I think the only way that could have worked as humor would be to really take it over the top. Unfortunately the author seems to want you to know that he knows how silly this is... there's too much ego to just go wholeheartedly into goofiness like say, a character out of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Oh, can't you just picture John Cleese playing a red pen-wielding Don Quixote-style editor running around? That would be so awesome.
Look, NOBODY likes editors. I've been an editor, I know this. People see editors and proofreaders as humorless, obsessive, snotty nitpickers who don't appreciate the hard work that writers put into their work (we do) and focus only on little mistakes. (um... that's our JOB)
This book is not going to sell. Obviously the topic is not exactly accessible unless you are a grammar nerd. And there's no real humor in it to attract any readers who aren't grammar nerds -- i.e. most of the public.
Honestly, I hope it doesn't sell. Not because I'm bitter and I want these guys to fail, but because the more people read the book the more it will keep alive the idea that editors and grammar nerds are unlikeable people who think they're better than everyone else. We don't. We just wish they'd use it's/its correctly. Please. Before our heads explode.
Article and excerpt from The Great Typo Hunt.