The word is not enough

I have been contacted by a reader named Ron who, commenting on my recent ranty column about people getting their words wrong, said: “It reminded me of a local writer who was critical of another local writer (who was, by then, dead so could not respond). The comment was about the first writer having (and I quote) ‘no less than eight grammatical errors on one page’. Oh dear (I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you where he went wrong).”

If you are a writer who dares to show your work publicly, you open yourself up to an extra level of scrutiny. We have to be careful when criticising other writers because eagle-eyed critics will be waiting with pens poised in readiness to tear us down as soon as we slip up (although eight grammatical mistakes on one page IS a lot).

I happily admit (as my column revealed) that I am not perfect. In case you haven’t read it, I had a rant about people confusing the words ‘perverted’ and ‘perverse’. I had always believed that ‘perverse’ was when something happened that was the opposite to expectations, while ‘perverted’ was something that was sexually depraved. Therefore, when people used ‘perverse’ when they meant ‘perverted’ it really wound me up. Turns out, ‘perverse’ CAN also mean sexually depraved, so I was wrong and had to force feed myself humble pie.

I am also not perfect when it comes to grammar and am guilty of beginning sentences with ‘So’, ‘As’, ‘But’ and ‘And’. The grammar I was taught at school is just a hazy memory and I rely on my gut to tell me if I’m wrong, which it does now and then. Despite having a successful career as a prolific writer, my dad was not perfect either and having failed his English O’level, his understanding of the English language was largely self-taught.

My rant was inspired by an audiobook about serial killers by a so-called ‘TV psychology expert’. I barely got past Chapter One, not because of the ‘perverse’ v. ‘perverted’ hoo-ha, but because it was just rubbish. I switched to listening to Bill Bryson’s ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’, his sequel to the hugely successful ‘Notes from a Small Island’. He is American born but has lived in England since 1974 and has dual citizenship. His observations about the cultural quirks of our nation are hilarious, and this one I do recommend you try.

There were a few times that he had his own rant about English language usage and was scathing about people who muddled up ‘me’ and ‘I’. I shrank down a bit in my seat knowing that his list of offenders could include me (not I) too.

But (there I go again…) there were certain things in the reading of this book that were incorrect. In Mr Bryson’s defence, he was not narrating it himself, and on the whole the reader did a very good job. However, he did drop the odd clanger, the most notable being his pronunciation of ‘Minoan’ when referring to Knossos Palace. The narrator said ‘MinoNan’. The first time he said it, I let him off, because when you’ve read a whole chapter almost flawlessly, it must be an absolute pain to start again for the sake of one small mistake.

However, it turned out to not be one small mistake, and he said ‘MinoNan’ every single time it appeared. How could he get something as famous as the Minoan Civilisation wrong? Or was it his script that had it wrong? And (yep, another…) who had given the OK for it to be published with such a glaring error? It was not the only spoken error, but the one that most irked me.

While I’m on the subject of audiobooks, it would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to drop in a shameless plug: if you haven’t listened to the Constable series by a certain Nicholas Rhea narrated delightfully by Philip Franks who starred in Heartbeat, then what are you waiting for?

And (there I go yet again) having listened to them all, there is the odd error here and there, particularly on some Yorkshire place name pronunciations, but I’m not going to be too critical.

After all, there but for the grace of God go I.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 15th Nov and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 13th Nov 2024