Apostrophe catastrophe, # 51

Dr Faustus has found another catastrophic apostrophe:

Link: Saskia Sarginson, ‘Saskia’s Writing Tips’

The good doctor comments, with justifiable disgust: ‘Apostrophe catastrophe (downright ghastly… and a ****ing writing website too!).’ Clearly, Ms Sarginson should have quit while she was ahead (i.e., after the section title).

tips for writer’s

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 43

Some readers will recall that this novel have featured before — more than once. This is, I think, the last from my archive, and a wonderful mangle it is too!

Diane Capri, Due Justice (Boise, ID: Stonegate, 2012. Previously published as Carly’s Conspiracy), p. 218. Link: Amazon.co.uk

I’m not sure what the writer thinks eek means. Certainly she’s not evoking an Middle English word for ‘also’, or having her character make an interjection of surprise. Yet eke, which OED confirms means ‘to lengthen’ or ‘to prolong’ or ‘to supplement’, doesn’t seem to fit the context either. 

Merriam Webster, dismissing the meaning related to increasing or lengthening as archaic, offers a single example of modern usage, defining eke as ‘to get with great difficulty — usually used with out <eke out a living>’; and Oxford Dctionaries concurs: ‘eke (eke something out): Make an amount or supply of something last longer by using or consuming it frugally’.

However, this doesn’t seem to be something one can do with a name…

eek out the name

Not Washed or Cooked, # 60

This book was featured last Thursday, with a suggestion that it might reappear… Here are two more ouch-inducing moments:

 Diane Capri, Due Justice (Boise, ID: Stonegate, 2012. Previously published as Carly’s Conspiracy), p. 95. Link: Amazon.co.uk

 Diane Capri, Due Justice p. 119.

The Author’s Note contains a surprising statement:

 Diane Capri, Due Justice p. 312.

It’s not entirely obvious what heavily might mean in the context, but apparently it isn’t intended to equate to effectively, accurately or soundly. The born should not have made it through proofreading, and the tewnty suggests that the text hasn’t been through a spell-checker ― a process that a reader might fairly expect will occur before publication…

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 13

A homophone has not been proofread out in the first sentence here. It’s unfortunate that the following paragraph mocks someone’s inaccurate spelling…

Link: Google Books, Linda S. Clayton, Just Buried

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 56

Twice it's wrong, and then suddenly it's right ― so why not correct the earlier ones?

Link: Google Books. Barbara Brink, Entangled

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 48

This book featured on 26 March, and I wondered whether more mangles would occur. This is unusual:

Link: Amazon.co.uk, L. J. Charles, A Touch of Ice (p. 202)

OED observes that glassier was one of several spelling variants for glazier in Middle English, although the sole example listed shows it used as an alternative to glazer, meaning a polishing tool or wheel, in 1688. I checked glassier in Merriam-Webster in case it was a usage specific to the USA, but it occurs only as a comparative form under the entry glassy.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 23

Today's mangles come from four different sources, all of which presumably want to be taken seriously, but all of which failed to check before publication whether their work contained unfortunate slips of the fingers.

Link: North Fork Merchant Herald, 'pubic face'

Link: Dartmouth College Library, 'pubic face'

Link: C&O Canal Trust, 'pubic face'

Link: Young, On Female Body Experience (New York: OUP, 2005), 'pubic face'

C&O might be forgiven, though even a non-profit organization should bother to proofread to make sure it's displaying itself as well as possible. The journalist should certainly know better, but it's not a rare error in the media. Dartmouth College Library is displaying a pretty dire 'pubic face' for this project; but the instance in Isis Marion Young's book takes the prize here: various educated persons, such as the publisher's reader(s) and maybe even an editor, will have read the work in its journey from proposal to publication and should have picked this one up. Perhaps they all thought Young was making some kind of obscure pun and didn't like to ask…

I before E, or E before I?

Lots of people seem to have trouble spelling words that contain the vowel combinations ei and ie. Combinations like these, with a pair of vowels treated as a single syllable, with a simple sound, are called digraphs or monothongs.

I don't know how it's taught in other countries, but in the UK there's a mnemonic, 'i before e except after c'. Since it's only true for some words, it really doesn't help, and may indeed be why so many people have trouble correctly spelling words that include the ei and ie digraphs… 

The bad news is that there's no absolute rule that works for all words with the ie and ei combination, but there is a rough test that can be used to sort out quite a few. (The others just have to be learned or avoided.)

The test is based on the sound the digraph makes (and in the examples below, on British-English pronunciation).

1. If the sound the digraph makes in the word is ee (rhyming with feet), the 'i before e except after c' rule usually works:

• belief, believe, besiege, brief, cashier, chief,* chieftain, field, grief, grievous, lief, piece, pierce, priest, relief, relieve, reprieve, shriek, sieve, siege, thief, thieve, yield

*handkerchief and mischief work like chief, though they are not pronounced with the ee sound for ie

• ceiling, conceit, conceive, deceit, deceive, perceive, receipt, receive

2. If the sound the digraph makes is not ee (a sound other than ee), the spelling order is usually ei:

• eider, eiderdown, eight, foreign, forfeit, freight, heifer, heir, leisure, neigh, neighbour, reign, rein, skein, sleigh, their, veil, vein, weight, weir, weigh

3. The irregularities: learn them or learn to avoid them…

• ancient, feisty, fierce,* friend, seize, species, weird*

*strictly speaking, the ei in weird and the ie in fierce are not digraphs but diphthongs (a combination of two vowels that requires the mouth to move to a new shape), but for spelling purposes they can be included in this list

Always use a spellchecker and/or a dictionary to check the spelling if you aren't sure.