Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
It reminds me of a quote (I think from Hemingway) about a writer needing a built in **** detector. Books are never written. They are re-written. I've seen some very badly written fanfictions online that had the wrong form of a word (ie. "he lead the group" as opposed to the correct "he led the group" and other such mistakes. Professional newspaper writers aren't above screwing up either. Not that long ago there was a story linked to via another message board I'm on where a woman cut off her husband's gentiles of all things. The writer meant genitles but instead wrote gentiles which is a whole different word entirely. Both are valid words but apparently the writer relied on spell check rather than doing a read through to check that all was ok. I think that spell check just makes us lazy. I mean it does have its uses but all it can tell the writer is if they have spelled the word right, not if it's the right word in the first place. To be fair as far as some of the fan fictions I've read sometimes English isn't the writer's first language so you have to give a little latitude if they don't have a beta who is fluent in the language, but others are sometimes just as bad.
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The examples you give are not necessarily bad *writing* so much as bad (or no) *editing* or even proofreading. Rewriting may address some of those problems but you can't expect the author to catch everything. The recent surge in self-publishing means many lightly to not-at-all edited manuscripts are out there, and it shows. I also see this lack in online journalism. An important stage in the publishing process is being cut out and we are, alas, living with the results.
signed, former editor.