Quote:
Originally Posted by Ransom
True, and they often don't have proper indents and will sometimes have blank lines between paragraphs. (block format)
Well I did say "I find most everything at Gutenberg." Unfortunately a few of my favorite authors wrote between 1930 and 1960 (CS Lewis, Arthur C Clarke, and Charles Williams in particular). But the vast majority of readable material for anyone in the upper half of the IQ spectrum is going to be in public domain. My friend Ann and I have desperately tried to find some modern authors who are worth reading but have had very little success. That post that linked to the page where you try to tell male from female authors is a good example. Of the ten samples given, only one or two of them didn't read as though they were written by grade schoolers. I can't say I was shocked though when the key to the authors was given and I found that most were well-known modern authors. It's just that bad today.
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Touche on the
most part of the sentence. As far as what is readable though I think that's more subjective myself. Granted there are probably some bad books that shouldn't have been printed, but that is the case all through the history of publishing I think. I tried reading "Cat's Cradle" when I was younger and couldn't make sense of it. Another reader might have better luck. I think part of it also depends on where in their career a given writer is. A first published book isn't necessarily going to be as well written as one that comes later on, and if their health is in decline (later in their career) again they might not write as well. Or their last work might even be edited for publication by someone else as designated by their estate. Part of it might also be the faster paced world we live in now too. 50+ years ago you had to type out the manuscript on paper and then after giving it a good read through (to check for errors etc.) you wrapped it up and mailed it to the publisher who would then look it over and put it through more editing etc. before it would reach the stage of printing. All this took about 18 months to 2 years. Now days you just type it out on a computer monitor, run spell check, hope you caught any errors, and email it out to the publisher. The world has changed a lot since those days.