Nobody cares if you can make a long-winded technical argument that Puget Sound really is part of the Pacific Ocean. Nobody says that in passing, and it’s far more likely that the author simply didn’t look at a map.
Stephen Fry, in The Stars’ Tennis Balls (about which I’ve forgotten everything else) makes something of a plot point about a chess-playing character who likes the Winawer Variation of the French Defence; but the moves he gives belong in the Philidor Defence, which isn’t a line of the French at all. More or less, it’s what you’d get if you held up the French to a mirror. You’d think if Fry, the modern incarnation of Wilde and da Vinci rolled into one, was going to include chess in a story, he’d do his homework.
At least he didn’t make reference to someone “castling her adversary’s Queen” like a lady novelist I heard of. :smack:
Re: Seattle. Here’s a question: How many miles of coastline on the Atlantic Ocean does Pennsylvania have?
The correct answer, of course, is “Zero.” However: Philadelphia is an ocean port. Oceangoing ships come up the Delaware estuary and dock there. The Delaware Bay is as much an arm of the Atlantic as Puget Sound is of the Pacific. But nobody would say, off the top of their head, that Pennsylvania borders on the ocean.
I’m sure that’s exactly what happened. Puget Sound is still a part of, not just connected to, but a part of the Pacific Ocean, though.
Dr Deth You also made the wrong call that Seattle is on the Pacific Ocean. And, hopefully have been educated. Why do you continue to call Puget sound the Pacific Ocean?
Face it. You made a bad call because you did not know the local geography. No harm there. You did at least know that Seattle was close to the Pacific Ocean.
If you ever travel to the NW United States, I can guarantee you that if you call Puget Sound the Pacific Ocean you will be ignored, laughed at or corrected. And no one would go sailing with you.
You are wrong. It is as simple as that.
But this horse died quite a few posts ago……
So which ocean is the Panama Canal?
Plainly it changes half way through, duh.
We all agree that you guys call it Puget Sound. We also agree that few, if anyone call their nearest body of Ocean water by it’s Oceanic name (ie Pacific Ocean). But it still is the Pacific Ocean.
Puget Sound is part of the Pacific Ocean. I would not call it the Pacific Ocean, but as a dude with an advanced degree in Marine Biology, it’s still part of the Pacific ocean- legally, scientifically and geographically.
Nor did I make a bad call.I have been to Seattle a lot, I lived in Washington state for a while and I have relatives near Seattle.
OK, let us assume you live in Seattle now. You look out your window. What do you see? Seattle? King County? Washington State? The USA? North America? All are correct. But you’d say Seattle (or even whatever neighborhood or street). Even so, even though you wouldn’t say North America you’re still in it.
even wiki agrees:
“Situated in western part of the Washington State on an isthmus between Puget Sound (an arm of the Pacific Ocean) and Lake Washington,…”
Now, if the author had described her heroine as a local, who had said “Oh, look, I can see the Pacific Ocean from my window!” then we could deride her as having her character not speak as a native. But if it’s more a thought balloon than a statement, then it serves to let a casual reader know where Seattle is- as ignorance of Geography is rife. Letting a reader know that Seattle is on the Pacific coast is helpful- but to let them know it’s off Puget sound is not- for if you know where Puget Sound is, you certainly know where Seattle is.
As far as the deceased equine, you keep raising it from the dead, I’ll keep putting it down. 
You stick to your guns, I’ll give you that. 
(Bolding mine.)
So you’re conceding that the character should have said Puget Sound and not the Pacific Ocean?
If she was being portrayed as a local, and it was actual “saying”, then yes. Or more likely just “The Sound”.
I never say “Pacific Ocean” as a locator myself, just whatever local body of water it is (often the Monterey Bay or SF Bay) or just “the ocean”.
You target what the locator is to your audience. If I am talking to locals, I say I live “Downtown”. To dudes in nearby burgs, I say “San Jose”. To people outside the USA, I say “California”. The authors readership hopefully includes dudes from outside Washington state, thus a locator of “Pacific Ocean” is more useful than “The Sound”.
ooo little slice of heaven, you know how fucking hard it is getting good sausage gravy here in the frozen northern wasteland of Connecticut [without breaking down and making it myself…]
It’s not hard, you know. Good sausage gravy is rare anywhere. Just accept the fact that you have to make it yourself and life gets a lot easier.
I can say this because my local greasy spoon makes a pretty good gravy to go with their almost-acceptable CFS.
I would say it’s not “the Pacific Ocean”, it is part of the Pacific Ocean, sure, but it’s not the Pacific Ocean. Someone said it above, but why do we even call the Pacific Ocean “the Pacific Ocean”? It’s not even particularly separated from the other bodies of water in the World Ocean. If we distinguish the Pacific from the Atlantic despite being connected to it by water, why wouldn’t we distinguish Puget Sound from the Pacific in the same way?
I’m not arguing that it isn’t part of the Pacific (as I think is clear above), but it’s not crazy to say that it’s not “the Pacific Ocean”. I think I get what you are getting at and am not pooh poohing it, it’s just that I feel it’s bad communication skills (or lack of knowledge) for an author to have a character speak of seeing “the Pacific Ocean” from her window in Seattle.
So, what you are saying is that you are technically right in every way you care about but dead wrong in the way that’s at all relevant to this thread. Got it.
Not at all. The original point was "I once stopped reading a romance novel where the heroine looked out of the window in her Seattle office to view the Pacific." My response was “You can see the Pacific Ocean from Seattle, you know.”
I don’t think such a description is helpful. In fact, I would find it a little misleading. Let’s say I had no clue where Seattle was and you told me that it was on the Pacific Ocean. The mental picture I would form would be of a city right on the farthest west edge of the country, not tucked away in a sound. If I then looked at a map, I would kind of look at you funny (although I suppose your subsequent explanation of the technical definition of a sound would be edifying).
Pretty much anything written about anyplace East of Suez is riddled with inaccuracies which are laughable to the extreme.
Technically, if water flows both ways from one body of water to another, then they’re the same body of water. That’s why Puget Sound is part of the Pacific Ocean, and why rivers that flow into oceans are not part of the ocean. But by that reasoning Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are the same lake (and they technically are).
But sitting in Chicago saying I can see Lake Huron would be a lie.
To paraphrase Cecil, we can talk about logic, or we can talk about geography, but we can’t do both. You gotta pick.
The woman who wrote that a character looked on the Pacific Ocean from Seattle was ignorant.