Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
My problem is that I just can't read books that have poor grammar, punctuation and spelling, and sadly in the few independently-published books I've tried reading, those things have been all too common. No matter how good a story-teller the author is, for me, he or she needs to get those things right. Perhaps that's a failing on my part, and I'm being too picky, but I can't help it.
|
Unfortunately, this is all too true. I can just about cope with the odd few typos, as these are also present in traditionally published books (although I'd venture to say with far less regularity), and usually there is some evidence that the book has a least been put through a spellchecker. OTOH, there is a distressing number of books that have clearly been written by non-native English speakers, or in some cases native English speakers who are just really bad at their own language, without any attempt to have any sort of read-through or correction process before it's shoved up online. I've found this to be more common in non-fiction than in fiction, but both have more than their fair share of truly unreadable books. It doesn't show a great deal of respect for the reader, IMO.