Last night I read a short story by a successful indie author who shall remain unnamed. The book is currently riding high in the charts and has a raft of favourable reviews. My problem with the book: the author cannot correctly use apostrophes. I’m not talking about the odd typo; the same error is repeated several times. What makes me even more depressed: not one review mentions this issue. Whether this is because readers think that correct grammar doesn’t matter or because they’re simply not noticing, I don’t know. I’m also not sure which is worse, but the latter concerns me greatly.
As an indie author, I feel responsibilities, chiefly to write a good story, to entertain, to move, to provoke thought. It occurred to me that I also have a duty to get it right. Get it right, as in write accurately and according to the rules of grammar. If I have two parents and they sleep together, I most certainly do not have a parent’s bedroom but a parents’ bedroom.
Independent publishing is a wonderful thing. It allows anyone to express themselves and tell stories. It allows me to tell stories. But it also allows writers to propagate errors introduced by poor schooling, poor parenting and text-speak.
Authors are not just telling a story for entertainment purposes. They are showing readers how things should be written. They are, inadvertently perhaps, teaching.
If you are an author, are you a good teacher?
As an indie author, I feel responsibilities, chiefly to write a good story, to entertain, to move, to provoke thought. It occurred to me that I also have a duty to get it right. Get it right, as in write accurately and according to the rules of grammar. If I have two parents and they sleep together, I most certainly do not have a parent’s bedroom but a parents’ bedroom.
Independent publishing is a wonderful thing. It allows anyone to express themselves and tell stories. It allows me to tell stories. But it also allows writers to propagate errors introduced by poor schooling, poor parenting and text-speak.
Authors are not just telling a story for entertainment purposes. They are showing readers how things should be written. They are, inadvertently perhaps, teaching.
If you are an author, are you a good teacher?
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