# I hate authors who can't be arsed to research **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2009, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922 "2009-07-22T22:49:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/101 "2009-07-25T17:35:44Z")
> [@cricetus](#): > > It’s especially common with series mystery authors (guess it wouldn’t work for fantasy or sci fi authors…) I suggest you check out Guy Gavriel Kay’s _Ysabel, or: My Provence Vacation Write-Off_. A wretched book, and I say that as a Kay fan. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/102 "2009-07-25T17:44:43Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There are localisms, and if a character is supposed to be a native, the author should get them right. True. But in this case, the author obviously thinks that you can see the Pacific Ocean from Seattle. She didn’t fail to pick up on a localism – she doesn’t know where Seattle is. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/103 "2009-07-25T18:14:01Z")
> [@cricetus](#): > > I’m annoyed by books where the hero goes off to Rio or Paris and there’s a few action scenes at major landmarks with random infobits worked in. It’s obvious the author just wanted to write off their pleasure travel as writing-related research trips on their taxes and save money. I imagine them boasting about it to friends. “Set the next book in Australia to write off the trip. Heh heh heh.” It seems casually dismissive to fans and indifferent to the quality of the work. > > It’s especially common with series mystery authors (guess it wouldn’t work for fantasy or sci fi authors…) I hate choppy exposition in general, but it’s especially bad when an author tries to use conversation for exposition. Dan Brown’s probably the world’s worst of known authors. > [@](#): > > “The cat’s entrails being rearranged into a backwards e with marischino cherry for umlauts can only mean one thing,” Robert Langdon said to the interchangeable heroine Melisande McMuhammad. “The one legged nun assassin is at The Duomo, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral church of Florence, Italy, begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi, the exterior of the basilica of which is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white and has an elaborate 19th century Gothic Revival facade by Emilio De Fabris.”\* If for some reason you _want_ the exposition to be in a narration then have it as, say, a tour guide, or an audio guidebook, or reading aloud from a guidebook. Personally I’d just go (and this is wiki’s words not mine I should perhaps mention): > [@](#): > > The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as Duomo, is the cathedral church of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white and has an elaborate 19th century Gothic Revival facade by Emilio De Fabris.\* > As Robert Langdon and the new interchangeable heroine Melisande McMuhammad arrived there, the one legged nun assassin was reciting a Middle English translation of Seneca backwards but without the M’s it was clear that this meant the bomb was in the gift shop. James Michener was one of several authors who would just dump it in as if he were writing a guidebook, and _then_ he’d go into the story. When it’s a lot of info I think this works best. \*courtesy of Wikipedia ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/104 "2009-07-25T19:04:29Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > The point I was making was: If the writer placed Dartmouth itself in Vermont, that is an error – if the writer had a Vermont resident teaching at Dartmouth, with action taking place at his/her Vermont home, that might not be. Hopefully **Elfkin** will clarify. They taught at Dartmouth College\*\* in Vermont\*\*. Where they lived didn’t come up. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Woodhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@Miss\_Woodhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Woodhouse)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/105 "2009-07-25T19:04:46Z")
I once read a book by a Canadian author who set a book in Maryland. The main character kept referring to his “mum.” Took me out of the book every single time. There is nowhere in the US where a Mom is called a Mum. You’d think a Canadian author with several books under her belt would know that. Of course, I cut my adult book teeth on Victoria Holt, so what do I know. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/106 "2009-07-25T19:10:20Z")
Ha. I know a Canadian author who set a book in Montana. She has kids eating french fries with gravy in one scene. “Oh, Americans don’t do that?” she said when I mentioned it. I don’t know why the American publisher didn’t ask about that. Maybe they figure it’s something kids do in Montana. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/107 "2009-07-25T20:16:21Z")
> [@Miss\_Woodhouse](#): > > I once read a book by a Canadian author who set a book in Maryland. The main character kept referring to his “mum.” Took me out of the book every single time. There is nowhere in the US where a Mom is called a Mum. You’d think a Canadian author with several books under her belt would know that. I know individuals who say ‘mum’. It’s not a regional so much as an individual thing. I always disliked books where they say ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’; I know it’s done but it’s not a lot more common than calling your parents by their first names. Though that said I called my grandmother “Grandmother” (she was _not_ a Granny or a Grandma, and ‘Livia Augusta’ was already taken); my father called her Muh and his father Da, which is Irish, though with him it was more because that’s what he called them as a baby and he was never corrected. A regional word that I’ve read in books though I can’t remember which (IIRC _Green Mile_, set in a southern prison, may have used it) is a reference to characters drinking “pop”. I have _never_ heard a southerner call a soft drink a pop, and the first time i heard a non-southerner reference it I honestly didn’t know what they were talking about. Usually we refer to brand name (“juwanna Coke?” or for the older set “Co-cola?”) but the generic terms are soda, soft drink, or just “cold drink” (often pronounced ‘coal drank’). ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/108 "2009-07-25T20:27:45Z")
And American Indians- bad historical fiction writers and bad westerns have a field day with what they imagine to be the Indian patois. For starters not all Indians who talked with whites spoke in broken English; east of the Mississippi especially many of the chiefs were well educated and some (especially the [mestizo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo)) spoke English more fluently than their tribal language. Indians who couldn’t speak English rarely tried- they tended to communicate through interpreters; there’s records of one who came to the Continental Congress in 1776 who spoke no English but whose interpreter, a full blooded Algonquin, stunned the Congress by speaking in a perfect upper crust Oxbridge accent. In parts of the south and the midwest many Indians spoke fluent French as well as their own language. The Pilgrims communicated with Squanto [Esquantum] in Portuguese, at Jamestown there were some Indians who spoke a few words of Spanish and Powhatan dispatched some women from his village to live with the whites strictly to gain fluency in their language (Pocahontas became fluent in English in an amazingly short time when she was kidnapped), while Lewis & Clark would speak English to a party member who would translate into French for Toussaint Charbonneau who would translate into Hidatsa for his wife Sacagawea who would translate into Shoshone or the other dialects she spoke- sometimes there would be a line of interpreters and God knows how accurate the relayed message ultimately arrived. What you very rarely had post-contact was the “White man come in great canoe like mountain with log that make lightning and stick that make thunder and knives long as arm”- they’d more likely say “White men just unloaded cannons, guns and swords from their ship”. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/109 "2009-07-26T01:00:24Z")
> [@cricetus](#): > > Ha. I know a Canadian author who set a book in Montana. She has kids eating french fries with gravy in one scene. “Oh, Americans don’t do that?” she said when I mentioned it. I don’t know why the American publisher didn’t ask about that. Maybe they figure it’s something kids do in Montana. I don’t know about Montana, but some people in Texas do eat French fries and other sorts of fried potatoes (hash browns, cottage fries, etc.) with gravy. In some local diners, if you order hash browns, you get a side of sausage gravy automatically, which my husband and daughter regard as one of the most delightful dishes ever. In those places where they don’t give a bowl of gravy automatically, nobody blinks an eye if we ask for one. Our national dish is chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and cream gravy. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/110 "2009-07-26T03:31:17Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Apparently there is a [small number of people](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%27all#Controversy) who claim it can be used in the singular sense. Your likelihood of running into one of them in that scene is pretty damned small, though. I don’t understand the confusion on this point. Y’all = You All. You wouldn’t go up to your (lone) friend and say, “How are you all doing?”, would you? And I’m not even from Texas; I’m New Jersey born and bred. Sorry. Carry on with the book dissing. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/111 "2009-07-26T03:32:26Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Look. I live in Seattle. No one but no one would refer to Puget Sound as the Pacific Ocean. It doesn’t happen. Yeah, it’s connected to the Pacific Ocean. So is the Columbia River. That doesn’t mean you can see the Pacific Ocean from Portland Oregon. > > Would someone in Texas look out and see the Atlantic Ocean? No, they’d see the Gulf of Mexico, and if someone said they were looking at the Atlantic Ocean we’d think they were crazy, no matter how much they insisted that technically the Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s not just \*connected \*to the Pacific, it’s _part_ of the Pacific. (The river is not part of the ocean) Sure, I agree you wouldn’t say “I can see the Pacific Ocean from Seattle” but I don;t say that even from parts of coastal CA. I will either name the beach, bay or other subset of the Pacific, or just say “the ocean”. It’s like living on the northern border of Washington state and being able to see over the border. You’d say you can see Canada, but you would not say you could see the uSA, even though of course you can. You’d say you can see whatever county or city or maybe even state. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/112 "2009-07-26T03:34:03Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > True. But in this case, the author obviously thinks that you can see the Pacific Ocean from Seattle. She didn’t fail to pick up on a localism – she doesn’t know where Seattle is. But you _can_ see the Pacific Ocean from Seattle. She just didn’t know that the locals always \*say \*Puget Sound (or just “the Sound”), not “the Pacific Ocean”. That’s why she got the facts right, the localism wrong. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/113 "2009-07-26T03:46:41Z")
Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/114 "2009-07-26T03:52:37Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The Northwest Harbor? Yes, it is part of the Atlantic Ocean. Or rather it’s part of Chesapeake Bay, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. But that would be wrong. Just like calling the Puget Sound ‘The Pacific’ is wrong. Sure, both bodies of water connect to an ocean, but they’re \*\*not \*\*the ocean. It’s not a regionalism, it’s what they’re _called_. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/115 "2009-07-26T04:17:46Z")
> [@BiblioCat](#): > > But that would be wrong. Just like calling the Puget Sound ‘The Pacific’ is wrong. Sure, both bodies of water connect to an ocean, but they’re \*\*not \*\*the ocean. > It’s not a regionalism, it’s what they’re _called_. They do not just _connect_, they are _part of._ Just like the famous Palin line- yes, from some parts of AK you can see a part of Russia. But you could also say one can only see Kamchatka, not Russia. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/116 "2009-07-26T04:50:20Z")
Well hell, technically, there’s really no reason to call it the “Pacific” when it’s _all_ part of the interconnected [world ocean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Ocean). You see a border carved on the water on satellite maps? ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/117 "2009-07-26T04:51:05Z")
Those of you who say that Pugent Sound isn’t a part of the Pacific Ocean may want to consider the definition of [sound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_%28geography%29) > [@](#): > > In geography a sound or seaway is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord, or it may identify a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land (see also strait). To emphasize: a sound is a large sea or ocean inlet. Ocean inlet. Ocean. In the case of Puget Sound, I wonder which ocean that would be? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/118 "2009-07-26T04:52:56Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > On the first page of the novel there’s a southern character referring to another man, singularly, as “y’all” (e.g. “would y’all pass me that ketchup” when said to one person). Southerners don’t do this: y’all is plural, always, no exception (except when making fun of exaggerated southern accents by people who don’t know what they sound like and seem to think there’s only one or two anyway). Where I lived in Virginia (a small town outside of Charlottesville) it was both singular and plural, depending on how you pronounced it. “Ya’ll” was singular and “Y’all” was plural. Yes, the difference was delicate, but it was similar to “pen” vs “pin.” The former was “pin” while the latter was “pin.” IOW, context helped, but it wasn’t a cure-all. ETA: As I as a Virginian, even an Adopted one, what I describe as factual outweighs ANYTHING from the (look of distaste) other “Southern” states. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/119 "2009-07-26T15:37:41Z")
> [@Terminus\_Est](#): > > Those of you who say that Puget Sound isn’t a part of the Pacific Ocean may want to consider the definition of [sound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_%28geography%29) Nobody’s arguing that Puget Sound isn’t connected to the Pacific Ocean. What we’re arguing is that **nobody** calls it the Pacific Ocean and that Puget Sound (its **name** ) is **not** a localism. Calling it “Ivar’s Mud Puddle” – that’d be a localism. ---
**Author:** ![Promethea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Promethea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Promethea)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/120 "2009-07-26T15:51:14Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Pepper Mill doesn’t remember the name of the book where you could look into Scotland from Cornwall. She says it was a romance novel, and she read it in the 1980s (which is when it was published), but can’t remember anything else. Aw, what a shame. Thank you for asking her, appreciated. To deliver my own, Alan Moore is generally pretty hot on his local research and boasted about for instance reading all up on the Louisiana locale for Swamp Thing. Making it all the more startling that when that series followed a nun’s gruesome fate in London at the hands of a South American creature, she does so after getting a Northern Line train at Leicester square, going past Camden Town and then to Mornington Crescent to her demise. Nope - Mornington Crescent is before Camden Town if you are getting on at Leicester Square. The station was indeed often closed at that time as the story showed though. Also, feel free to insert your own “I’m Sorry I haven’t A Clue” gag if wanted too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922.md?page=7)