I was reading a short story in which the main character was from Texarkana, my hometown. He referred to Interstate 30, which runs through the north side of town as “Route 30”.
Before reading this story, I had never, in all my life, heard the phrase “Route 30” before. It’s “The Interstate” or “I-30” or even “Interstate 30”, but never, never, never “Route 30”. In these parts, “Route” refers to a rural mail route.
Any author who writes about London and uses the word “Cockney”, or any author who writes about the UK and makes it seem like a quaint 1930s rural backwater – well, that’s just obvious.
The science fiction author Lee Killough wrote a series of three cop novels set about 70-80 years in the future. The stories took place in Topeka, Kansas which is my home town. They are fun to read because, allowing for the changes time makes, she obviously knew the town very well.(I believe she lived/lives in Manhattan, about 60 miles away). Good books, and if you are a local there are a few amusing in jokes.
Best part is there is never any mention of someone named Phelps, so they must have in-bred themselves out of existence by that time.
There might be a reason for this error…I’m not sure if it’s common down south too, but this conversation would not sound all that strange to me.
“Who’s going to take out the trash?”
" Bob’ll do it."
Some people unfamilar with it may forget that it’s a contraction of you+all instead of you+will.
I once read a fairly awful book that took place in San Diego, in which the main character, supposedly a San Diego native, was shocked to discover how expensive rents were in the vicinity of Balboa Park. Well, duh! It’s impossible to imagine anyone around here being surprised by that “news.”
Two from Turtledove…
In Breathroughs he has a character (an artillery sargeant) locate his battery in Round Hill, VA because he could place his guns on the hill and have a commanding view of the entire Loudoun Valley looking north. Round Hill exists, it’s about 10 miles south of where I’m writing. And it’s a pitiful excuse for a hill. I don’t think you could see my HOUSE from that hill. The only thing you’d see clearly is the bulk of Short Hill Mountain to the north.
In Guns of the South, Robert E Lee and his general stand on top of a mountain and Lee exclaims that he can see 20 counties from there. 20? No chance…even at 3000 feet he’d only be seeing 20 miles or so. And from most of the mountain ridges at that height he’d just be able to see to the next next (Catoctin Ridge to Blue Ridge…Blue Ridge to Allegany Ridge…etc…)
One from Stephen Coontz…
And let’s not even get into movies set in Washington.
Almost everyone who writes mystery novels set in Salt Lake City gets the geography wrong (and therefore proves that they’re not from SLC). It all started with Arthur Conan Doyle himself – who, in the very first Sherlock Holmes novel has the Utah pioneers crossing “the Great Alkali Plain” on their way to the future Salt Lake City.
The Salt Desert is to the WEST of Salt Lake City. The Utah pioneers came down Emigration Canyon, to the East of the valley.
The errors continued with th more recent Tabernacle, and even with some of the true-crime books about the Hoffman Documents Scandal (at least the ones written b out-of-towners).
The only one to get it right seems to be Robert Irvine, whose Moroni Traveler mysteries ([Baptism for the Dead, Gone to Glory,…**) have their geography straight. I conclude that Mr. Irvine has lived in Salt Lake City.
Many non-Southerners assume that “you all” is simply a substitute for “you.” It may even be so, in some local dialects. But in most places that use “you all,” it is the second person plural. The singular is still just “you.” So you can misuse “you all” by using it as a singular pronoun.
I was reading a collection of Golden Age SF, and in one of the stories, a rather large alien crash-lands in a large inland lake, and the resulting tsunami devastates a major city. Chicago, I figured… Except it wasn’t; it was Cleveland. But most of Cleveland is about as far above lake level as the lake is deep; any Clevelander would consider the notion of a Lake Erie tsunami to be laughable. It was kind of nice to catch that one, though: Nowadays, nobody writes about Cleveland unless they’re from there. It’s nice to know that once upon a time, we were actually on the map.
About “Y’all”, by the way: Of course most authors writing about the South get it wrong. Any usage of “y’all” constitutes getting it wrong! <D&R>
/me laughs as Enderw24 falls into the pit that he has diggedsic.
Welcome to the SDMB, Malacandra. What you witnessed is known here as “Gaudere’s Law”, which follows:
“If you criticize the spelling or grammar of another poster, there will be a spelling or grammar error in your criticizm.”
It hardly ever fails. 
Especially as people tend to spell Gaudere incorrectly, setting them up for a triple-spike.
Bit of a detour, but someone mentioned an author’s evident lack of work experience of any kind.
The movie “Secretary” has a similar problem. I live in a large metro area, and there are no job ads for secretaries here, and haven’t been for years. If anyone wants to hire someone to do the sort of work formerly described as “secretarial,” they advertise for an Administrative Assistant. There is still a position known as “legal secretary” but it’s always advertised as “legal secretary” never just “secretary.” I haven’t even seen a lot of legal secretary ads in the last couple of years, but that could just be the Republican economic revitalization at work.
If you advertised for a secretary you’d probably have to hear sarcastic comments like, “Ooh, a secretary, do I get to make your coffee and lie to your wife and pick up your cleaning and give you blowjobs at lunch?”
Similar to books, it amazes me how no one can ever get a Boston accent correct in a movie or TV. I loved watching Cheers, except having to listen to Norm’s pitifull attempt to sound local. Same thing happend in The Perfect Storm-- excptt for Marky Mark, who grew up in the area. Matt Damon can dig it up from his past, too. Hey, if you can’t do the accent right, just don’t do it!
True, of course. Most people would have left a space between “digged” and “sic”, just as most people wouldn’t spell “criticism” with a zee.
I wonder what my chances are of hitting the Post button before the gremlins get at this one? Pretty slim, I’ll be.t
And if I point out that sic means ‘as stated,’ and not ‘this error is intentional,’ I’ll probably end up including an error to.
I’ll sa!y 
I have huge respect for Norman Mailer, and I think that Harlot’s Ghost is one of his best novels.
The first part of the story takes place on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where I grew up. Mailer had a summer home in Somesville for a while and knows the area pretty well, but not as well as me. At one point, Mailer describes the Trenton bridge as leading into Bass Harbor, but in fact Bass Harbor is a good 12 miles from that bridge. Hah!!! I’ve never had the opportunity to point out this meaningless detail until now. Thanks!
let’s say that i’ve had my fill of books set in the belfast during the “troubles” that aren’t written by northhern irish authors.
ditto northern irish accents in films and tv.
it is considered the most difficult of all the regional accents of the british isles to pull off.
and unless you’re a method actor who has been living in character for several months, on location in belfast, don’t even try. and even then, you’ll probably fall flat on your face.
are you listening brad pitt?
i can tell the frickin TOWN in the north someone is from, their religious background and class position from a few sentences, and i’m not alone.
don’t fob me off with something that sounds like liverpudlian mixed with glaswegian and dublin.
i won’t be fooled.
In Tom Wolfe’s A MAN IN FULL, he uses a variety of black and white accents from Atlanta and from south Georgia. I’ve lived in south Georgia and I’ve been to Atlanta many many many times and know and work with people from there, but I’ve never heard accents that match the ones he described. (Atlanta is located in the heart of the Atlantic south but the fact that it’s southern is almost geographic trivia; it’s residents would have more in common with people from Denver than they would with people from Macon (a city an hour south).