In a technical sense, yes, a terminal is a station. Most people won’t even care if you call it Grand Central Station, with or without the capitalization, but to a lot of New Yawkers, it’s like “Frisco” to a San Franciscan. It’s up to you whether using the correct term matters. A writer who gives a shit about his craft should never, ever use “Grand Central Station” as the name, though.
One thing that mildly irritates me when I see it in 19th century literature is when the author obscures the date, but does a lousy job at it.
For instance, I read one book where they referred to the year as “18–” in one place, “187-” in another place and “1870” in a third place.
Similarly, I’m reading another book where they refer to the date as “18–”, one year before the Battle of Waterloo (no one will ever figure out when that occurred, of course).
Astronomically impossible depictions of the Moon. Like having a solar eclipse the day after a full moon. Or having the crescent moon in the evening point the wrong way (for anyone in the northern hemisphere). Or in general, having the phase of the moon not fit the time it supposedly rises or sets.
I’m a lifelong Anglican too. Confession and Absolution are rare in the Anglican tradition, but they are around. It really depends what branch your parish tends toward. Evangelicals usually accept two sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) where Anglo-Catholics accept seven (Baptism, Eucharist, Matrimony, Confirmation, Ordination, Unction, and Confession). Even in strongly Anglo-Catholic parishes I’ve found confession and absolution to be rare. My priest offers it, but says it should be reserved only for the most life-damaging sins. I’ve never done it, but others from my parish do.
Except thats what you will hear most people call it. In New York City. Where it is. And it was once called Grand Central Station. So if it is mentioned as part of the third person narrative it would be wrong to call it a station. But if it is coming from a character I would see no problem with someone calling it Grand Central Station. I’ve been there many times. When I think of it I always think Grand Central Station.
The war was in Europe. Even the wars you mention would leave her a decade short. I tried every other war I could think of and none of them fit the context, which could only describe an American heading for the new war in 1917 or 1918.
In Kage Baker’s The Company series, the botanist Mendoza finds a rare species of holly: Ilex tormentosa.
There’s no such word as tormentosa. It’s tomentosa, which comes from the Latin word for wooly. It’s not a typo either, it was repeated several times in the first book and also in following books.
It’s nitpicky, but I figure if you’re going to be pedantic enough to use binomial nomenclature, you should get it right.
Wow. I doubt that even one person in my acquaintance has ever heard the word sachet before. It simply does not exist in American English, in any context.
But Sulu said that before they knew about those. . .
In at least two of his books (*The Stand *being one, and I think The Dead Zone is another), Stephen King describes a ring a male character is wearing. In both cases, the rings are MASSIVE - the stones in each ring stick out from the character’s hand by two or three inches.
I don’t know if Steve ever stopped to actually measure that, but I’m fairly certain nobody (with the possible exception of Liberace) ever wore a ring that large - certainly not the Joe Schmoes who were sporting them in the books. If nothing else, it would make everyday actions such as putting your hands in your pockets impossible, and something like wiping sweat off your brow with the back of your hand could land you in the hospital with a concussion.
Sure, but movies that are SPECIFICALLY about newscasts should at least get the small details right. If you did a movie about plumbers it would be pretty dumb if he was using an axe to fix a toilet leak.
It’s common enough when referring to a pouch of herbs like lavender, worn tucked in the bra or other undergarment. But as I doubt anyone much under about 70 has ever done that, the term could be considered obsolete here.
Sure it does. My grandmother is quite fond of potpourri and many of the pouches are labeled as sachets.
(Looks like Amateur beat me to it.)
Of course it’s Sauron who complaints about guys wearing unreasonably large rings. This kind of made my day.
I don’t disagree, really. Sometimes those things bother me, too. It’s just that you can see it’s not the priority for the people writing the show or movie.
Two or three inches and that “stone” better be made out of lollipop/sucker material.
SO TRUE. This kept taking me out of the book, which I otherwise enjoyed. The main character is supposed to be a few years younger than me, but his entire frame of reference was much more similar to my dad’s. Coincidentally, my dad and Stephen King are about the same age. Go figure.
Agreed that it wasn’t simply a case of a younger guy being more interested in the pop culture of a previous generation, it was a incredible lack of ANY indication that the character was my peer.
In Hollywood, all Christians are Catholics. Unless you’re black, in which case you’re Baptist.
This wasn’t published writing, it comes from a peer in a college writing course I took, but a classic example of failing to visualize what one’s character is doing that always stuck with me. A male character is lounging against a doorway at a party. Holding a six-pack of beer cans in one hand, he pulls one loose and pops the top open, while casually lighting a cigarette.
“Maybe he’s a Hindu god,” someone in the class guessed. 
I can’t remember the name of the novel, but a glaring error that always stuck in my head occurred in one of those military potboilers dashed off by some retired military guy. The guy was Air Force, and had painfully constructed some plot in which a US forward air base in the Gulf region is under threat from an Iranian amphibious landing across the Strait of Hormuz. For plot reasons I don’t remember (but obviously to create a scenario where a dastardly President would leave Good Americans to die), the Americans cannot be seen by the Soviets to be attacking the rusty fleet of freighters the Iranians are using. It’s perfectly okay to fight the Iranians, but the Air Force guys cannot bomb the ships because Soviet satellites witnessing it would somehow be worse.
Anyway, the author has his characters moan and groan about how there’s no way to save the lives of the airmen at the base because anything flying will be visible, and there’s no way to sink a defenseless merchant ship from an unseen platform, so we’ll just have to take our lumps.
Guess all those billions we spent on submarines were wasted, huh?
It would be a simple matter – even if not technically true – to include a single throwaway sentence like “It’s too bad our subs can’t operate in those shallows, Mr. President,” or “The Sultan has absolutely forbidden us to use submarines for fear any torpedoings will scare away vital oil tanker traffic,” or what have you. but there’s nothing in the book referring to submarines at all – it’s clear the author, a former Air Force pilot, is preoccupied with airpower, and simply forgot about submarines.
Sure it does, as in a “sachet of lavender, placed in a drawer”.
What bugs me is smoking. Honestly, I know Big Tobacco bribed publishers etc with ad money in the past (to the point where some editors added in “He lit up a cigarette” into crazy places like space travel, this was John Campbell’s sin, too), but that’s over isn’t it? Sure, a few dudes still smoke. But nearly everyone craps, takes a pee, etc, and they aren’t mentioned.
It’s outdated and it was bought & paid for. Let’s drop it.
Yeah, dude, your little ring was quite a size until it cooled down after they took it after you chopped finger….