# Book Errors That Pull You Out of the Story

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-errors-that-pull-you-out-of-the-story/785686>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [May 2, 2017, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-errors-that-pull-you-out-of-the-story/785686 "2017-05-02T01:04:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 9

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**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-errors-that-pull-you-out-of-the-story/785686/161 "2017-05-19T18:22:30Z")

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Minor errors I can gloss over, what throws me out of a book is when an author goes to great lengths to talk about how something works and gets it completely wrong. In one of the Honor Harrington books David Weber makes a great deal out of how HH has an antique 1911 pistol, and spends (IIRC) most of a chapter talking about how it works. But when it turns out that she needs it for a plot point (sneaking a weapon past detectors that look for energy weapons), she uses it incorrectly without any explanation as to why. If he hadn’t gone into such detail, I wouldn’t even have noticed, but because he did it reached out and slapped me out of the story.

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**Author:** ![HowSoonIsThen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@HowSoonIsThen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HowSoonIsThen)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-errors-that-pull-you-out-of-the-story/785686/162 "2017-05-20T13:39:59Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> How could they tell that the black guy was American

How could they tell the other three were a Northern European, East Indian, and Asian (which would also encompass the East Indian)?

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-errors-that-pull-you-out-of-the-story/785686/163 "2017-05-20T14:25:18Z")

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Those were presumably all assessments of their probable ancestry. African-American, however, is a statement both about a person’s ancestry and their current citizenship.

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**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-errors-that-pull-you-out-of-the-story/785686/164 "2017-05-20T15:11:59Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> African-American, however, is a statement both about a person’s ancestry and their current citizenship.

meh, it may be an indication that their genes were predominately African, with some “American” melting pot genes.

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