Some of the problem may be that most editors at major publishing houses don't do much real editing any more. Mostly they acquire books, then give them a looking over to make sure the basic pieces are all there
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Considering how picky the purists get, I strongly suspect the copyeditors just don't know the period.
I just read one, put out by a major publisher, that had a woman wearing gown made of gabardine. Cloth for trousers and coats, and invented sixty-five years after the story takes place.
True about purists -- but how much of the perceived audience of the book will they make up? If the people saying yea or nay on publication think that purists make an insignificant (albeit vocal) portion of the audience, they'll insist that the correct but complex details be rewritten and simplified for the perceived "general audience."
Re "gabardine," I think we can blame The Decemberists' "Down by the Water" for that one. There's a line about someone being "all dolled up in gabardine" that probably was written because the word scanned right and sounded like a very fancy fabric. That song got so much airplay for a while that I'm sure the incorrect sense of the word is now burned into a lot of people's minds.
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Still thinking about it several days later. Wow.
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I just read one, put out by a major publisher, that had a woman wearing gown made of gabardine. Cloth for trousers and coats, and invented sixty-five years after the story takes place.
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Re "gabardine," I think we can blame The Decemberists' "Down by the Water" for that one. There's a line about someone being "all dolled up in gabardine" that probably was written because the word scanned right and sounded like a very fancy fabric. That song got so much airplay for a while that I'm sure the incorrect sense of the word is now burned into a lot of people's minds.
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I think the purists are probably a very small portion of the current readership, or these would be handled differently.
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