Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
If a character enters a phone booth and uses a pay phone, do you change that to the character using a cell phone, because phone booths are archaic and a modern reader might say, What's a phone booth? If a character plays a record on a Victrola, do you change it to an mp3 on an iPod? I mean, if you're going to take it upon yourself to modernize, where do you draw the line?
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If the meaning of "phone booth" changes and now commonly means "the porta-potty people use for anonymous sexual encounters," and young readers have never heard the archaic usage of the word, and the book was pulp fiction aimed at tweens then, yes, I believe there is a strong case for changing the word to something that accurately communicates the idea of "phone booth."
We are not talking about the evolution of technology. We're talking about old words having modern meanings that are confusing or distracting. Imagine you are reading the ultimate tear-jerker paragraph about a man lamenting the death of his five-year-old son and the last line of the paragraph says "and he was so gay." Now imagine reading that out loud to a group.
How important is that word? Important enough to nullify an otherwise powerful paragraph? Would the long-dead author and his descendents prefer we throw his work in the trash and forget his name because he chose to use one of those rare words that has a completely different meaning today and now causes people to laugh, be confused, or at best it just breaks the spell with a distracting hiccup?