Grammar gremlins

I’m sure most people have come across the grammar gremlins and the spelling sprites… those unseen creatures who jumble your context and muddle up your words. I publish my novels as e-books and it so infuriating when I reread them to find errors. Now I know they are often errors on my part which I just have failed to spot in the numerous editings that I do, but sometimes they really aren’t my fault, honestly!

I thought it was just on e-books (self-published and ‘professional’ books) where letters are transposed, sentences broken up – or paragraphs put together, but I have found examples in books published by companies, most recently ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque. It is a wonderful book about the first World War, written by a young German who served. If you haven’t read it i really recommend it, beautifully, lyrically written, and beautifully and lyrically translated by Brian Murdoch… however I came across several annoying ‘typos’ or transcription errors.

It is not only in e-books, though; last night I was reading a tree-book (paperback) and there were several errors… either sloppy editing or spellcheck interfered! I think spellcheck has a lot to answer for; there was an article in yesterday’s newspaper about ‘schoolboy howlers’ and errors in school homework or exams are things that all teachers chuckle over… but as i read the article I wondered if some of the examples came from work which had been written on a computer and spellcheck had interfered as opposed to mistakes by the writer. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/10959363/32-worst-exam-howlers-of-all-time.html