Grammatical Rage

For those of you who have read the Brink of Distinction trilogy, you’ve seen what continues to cause me minor embarrassment: grammar mistakes.  There are faint mistakes sprinkled throughout, but it’s enough to distract an avid reader who’s trying to get engrossed in the story.  I can’t really defend myself, since it’s my fault there are errors.  I guess if I were a professional instead of a hobbyist, those mistakes wouldn’t appear.  However, I have to make these two comments:

I AM a hobbyist, which is why I can’t afford an editor.

I AM an asshole, which is why I only suffer minor embarrassment.

For book one, Burden of Sisyphus, I hired an editor who was also part of the agency representing the book.  Much like the agency itself (which you have heard mention of before in previous posts), the editor sucked… big.  Not only did he not correct all the faults, he actually added some.  In one instance, he changed “raw power” to “war power”.  The paragraph no longer made sense.  He was the unprofessional editor.

The problem was, the editor, albeit crappy, was expensive.  Even independent editors cost money.  More than I’m making writing thus far, I might add.  Instead, I rely on family and friends to review my books and make corrections.  They’re not professionals, though I respect them more than most people in the industry.  Errors still slip through… it’s something I’ve come to terms with.

There are certain errors that will not appear in my books if I can help it.  We’ll call it Grammatical Rage.  When I see these mistakes (most commonly seen in the comments section of a CNN article), my world goes red and I want to choke the public education system in America.  I don’t care that the public education system in America (PESA) is a vague machine made up of hundreds of underpaid and mostly uncaring individuals.  I don’t care that PESA is not supported financially by the government.  I don’t care that PESA is best personified in a joke by comedian Louis Black, when he explained that the 49^th ranked state in the US showed students pictures of microscopes, since they couldn’t afford the real thing.  And yes, there was a state worse than that.

My fury is with the basics:

To, Two, Too

Their, They’re, There

Your, You’re

Anything that involves text lingo (to include, but not limited to: h8r, sk8r, rofl, u, r, ur, luv, and lol except when referencing cats)

I didn’t grow up in the US.  My formative years were spent abroad, learning proper English from international schools.  It saddens me that while I was learning English, Japanese, and Thai simultaneously, we have people born in the US who act like English is their second language, although they don’t have a first.

All I ask is that people utilize they’re language properly.  It’s not two difficult.  Take pride in you’re language.  Take pride in yourself.  Realize that there’s no such thing as urself.  Lol.