Falling 2016-11-15

[Dave]

I guess he never heard of caribou?

I guess not. That was exactly what I said to him: "Reindeer is another word for caribou... look it up!" and he refused.

[AnotherFairportfan]

Was that judged to be a capital offence?

Well, it was interesting.

(For those who don't know, the City of London is a separate entity from the city of London, which, among other things, the Monarch is forbidden to enter without permission from the Lord Mayor - saying someone is "big in the City" is equivalent to saying someone is "big on Wall Street".)

[AnotherFairportfan]

(It seems that, at the time, I had developed a reputation as someone who would occasionally commit an elaborate joke or pun, with some kind of dreadful but deadpan-serious "shaggy dog" setup to it... hence, anything I said which was even slightly out of the ordinary ought not to be trusted. I truly don't know why people would think that of me. )

For some reason, there have been times when people seemed to feel the same about me.

Tell one story about how the Swedish sailor invented a favourite Italian food and people look at you funny for YEARS...

[Sgt. Howard]

(It seems that, at the time, I had developed a reputation as someone who would occasionally commit an elaborate joke or pun, with some kind of dreadful but deadpan-serious "shaggy dog" setup to it... hence, anything I said which was even slightly out of the ordinary ought not to be trusted. I truly don't know why people would think that of me. ).

[/quote]


Dave... here in Okanogan County, there are three billboards along Highway 97 warning people about encountering you on the internet... saying that your puns have been known to induce migraines, nausea and alcoholism. Reputation? In Ferris county, some of your posts are banned. I am on the Sheriff's watch list because I frequent this site.

[FreeFlier]

One of those "I never make mistakes!" types.

*eye twitch*

Yeah.

At least the next one I encountered at work was enough of a problem to get fired . . . one of those people that bounces around all the time because of the trouble . . . we got irritated enough to make official complaints firm enough to justify firing. I got the picture real fast when the first time that I called up to say "Um, I don't know how you did this <where you came from>, but the way it's done here is . . ." and the response was "I don't make mistakes - ask anybody!"

So I did . . . I called up someone I knew over there and asked what he could tell me about X. "Oh god! Why?" Yeah, that's what I expected. We still spent some months on attempting training, then made official complaints about an egregious offense, and kept it up ever time there was another (frequently), including recording all of the refusals to follow procedure . . . The individual is no longer with the company.

Once upon a time there was a copy editor at a Major US Publisher. The company had bought a best-selling British novel that revolved around financial skullduggery and international intrigue.

Our editor noticed that the book had an inconsistency in the way that it capitalised a particular name, and decided it needed to be fixed, so she went through, and every where that the name appeared with an initial capital "C" she changed it to lowercase, because sometimes but not always referring to the "City of London" had to be a typographical error.

I had someone do that to one of my stories . . . I had two characters with unusual names/nicknames, and other characters consistently got the nicknames wrong. to convey the uncertainty, I used a double pattern: in thought or dialogue, a character that knew the correct nickname or spelling consistently used the correct spelling, while one that didn't know consistently used the wrong spelling. In narration, the spelling alternated.

(In fact, the girlfriend of one of the characters got it wrong for a long time, until she read something he'd written with his initials next to it, and realized he was going by his initials, not an odd name. She realized when she started to say it . . . and never admitted the error.)

Someone edited the story into an ebook format, and "fixed" all of the spellings without asking about it . . .

--FreeFlier

[lake_wrangler]

I had someone do that to one of my stories . . . I had two characters with unusual names/nicknames, and other characters consistently got the nicknames wrong. to convey the uncertainty, I used a double pattern: in thought or dialogue, a character that knew the correct nickname or spelling consistently used the correct spelling, while one that didn't know consistently used the wrong spelling. In narration, the spelling alternated.

(In fact, the girlfriend of one of the characters got it wrong for a long time, until she read something he'd written with his initials next to it, and realized he was going by his initials, not an odd name. She realized when she started to say it . . . and never admitted the error.)

Someone edited the story into an ebook format, and "fixed" all of the spellings without asking about it . . .

--FreeFlier

Was the ebook done on your behalf, or for his own pleasure? Were you able to get him to correct it?

[FreeFlier]

I had someone do that to one of my stories . . . I had two characters with unusual names/nicknames, and other characters consistently got the nicknames wrong. to convey the uncertainty, I used a double pattern: in thought or dialogue, a character that knew the correct nickname or spelling consistently used the correct spelling, while one that didn't know consistently used the wrong spelling. In narration, the spelling alternated.

(In fact, the girlfriend of one of the characters got it wrong for a long time, until she read something he'd written with his initials next to it, and realized he was going by his initials, not an odd name. She realized when she started to say it . . . and never admitted the error.)

Someone edited the story into an ebook format, and "fixed" all of the spellings without asking about it . . .

Was the ebook done on your behalf, or for his own pleasure? Were you able to get him to correct it?

Some of each (though not for pay), and I explained what the deal was . . . don't know if s/he corrected it or not.

--FreeFlier

[AnotherFairportfan]

Someone edited the story into an ebook format, and "fixed" all of the spellings without asking about it . . .

--FreeFlier

That happened to John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" (includes the first reference anyone has ever come up with for the term "worm" in a malware context, BTW) - there were two very similar characters, names like John and James, twins. An editor decided it was sloppy editing/revision, so she arbitrarily picked one name and used it for all appearances.

ABout two thirds of the book, as a result, "he" gets vaporised in a nuclear blast - and the turns up healthy a few pages later

Quite a bit of derision followed, and Brunner, as he had about other bits where editors screwed up his work, complained bitterly in fanzines.

A while later, i read somewhere that Brunner refused to review the galleys of his stuff.

[Warrl]

Someone edited the story into an ebook format, and "fixed" all of the spellings without asking about it . . .

My favorite along this line was a book where large parts of it occurred on sailing ships (those being the height of transportation technology). Sailors kept their personal belongings in their seabags - and used said seabags as pillows.

Except for a couple chapters, where for some reason they used teabags.

[AmriloJim]

To err is human... to really much things up requires a word processor.

[Typeminer]

I was upbraided for using indicies as the plural of index . . . the twit wouldn't accept Webster's as an authority on the matter!

Naturally, I used indicies at every excuse for months afterwards.

And I hope your copy-editor got on your case about it every time, wondering why you have an extra i in "indices".

That's different. He was claiming there was no such word as indices.

He made a number of other bogus claims too . . . he eventually got transferred to another group. One of those "I never make mistakes!" types.

--FreeFlier

Good copy editors don't claim they never make mistakes. The good copy editors fear they'll f### it up every time they touch a keyboard.

[AnotherFairportfan]

Good copy editors don't claim they never make mistakes. The good copy editors fear they'll f### it up every time they touch a keyboard.

An author acquaintance/friend - i have the depressing feeling it was Karl Wagner or Jack Chalker or Andy Offutt; one of my DEAD author friends - had a running feud going with the compositors at one publisher - he'd get the galleys for his new book, carefully check them over, mark any errors the copy editor had missed, send them back, wait, and get the corrected galleys - wbich would have Brand New Errors.