In my head, that is. During pleasure reading. That others have written.
:smack:
I can’t seem to shut off the cynic in my head that makes me stop reading and start re-reading and looking for more errors. Once I find grammatical or spelling errors in a published article, I find that I’m then feeling disdain for the writer. Sometimes the usages are obscurely correct but just look wrong. I then feel superior to the writer and ponder availing myself to proof-read their future projects. Or to suggest to the Daily Review Editor that their proofer sucks and I would be much better…from home…for $25 an hour.
Anybody else have this problem and know how to let it go? I loudly and proudly admit my neuroses, of which there are many. What could you call this affliction, other than say, asshole? I need help. I will admit that I haven’t noticed so many manglings in books, but the problems in the local newspapers and online publications drive me batty.
What say you? Should I just revel in an all-too-rare situation where I might actually be superior? Should I feel bad for the poorly taught author? Should I tell my friends so we can point and laugh?
You are not too badly afflicted yet. One of my editor friends can’t read a newspaper without using his blue pencil to make corrections and proofreading marks as he goes along.
He told me once he does this with books too, but refrains when it is a library book, but only with great difficulty.
I don’t notice many glaring grammar and/or spelling errors (thank og), but I do have a tendency to re-write things in my head: I’ll be happily reading something, come across a sentence that isn’t being all that it can be, and will pause to mentally re-work it. Then I’ll keep reading. I do this a lot. So apparently I can suppress my inner proofreader, but not my inner editor.
Just more fodder for my eventual therapy sessions…
What about those people who are doing the closed captioning for some news shows? Isn’t there a few seconds of delay where they could actually make whatever they’re typing look like actual words?
One of my reasons to prefer books in the original language whenever possible is that it saves me from that dreadful moment when I’m fully inmersed in the story and the Tractor Trailer of Doom* stares at me…
mistranslation for the Grim Reaper, I kid thee not
