The importance of printouts.

I'm proof-reading. That means that the Spanish version of my children's anthology, "The Seer's Stone" has been laid out ready for printing, and I'm going through it with a fine tooth comb, looking for mistakes.

 Actually, it's the second time through. I found a worrying number of mistakes last time. Mostly (I hasten to add) stuff like extra/missing spaces, and capitalising words which would be capitalised in English, but which shouldn't be in Spanish. But still far more of them then I expected.

So I'm doing it all again. Now, for some reason, human beings catch far more mistakes on paper than a computer screen. So it's quite important that the final checks are done looking at a printout.

So naturally my printer has died. But of course!

Word Crimes

 There's lots I love about this video. But.

Look, I get irritated by careless writing and wilful ignorance. Most writers do. Readers aren't telepathic. If you want to communicate, don't expect your readers to puzzle their way around your bad English; make the effort to write clearly. Especially if you expect lots of readers. Which is more reasonable: one writer making an effort, or 200 readers?

Still and all, I feel that it's careless to lump in people with cerebral palsy, dyslexia or Down's syndrome (a common cause of mouth-breathing) with people who refuse to learn and still expect everyone to listen.

Which doesn't stop me loving Weird Al's big dic-tionary.

Just finished reading "The Heretic"

This is only the second Bernard Cornwell book I've read, and I loved it. OK, so it wasn't particularly deep, but I was rooting for the hero and the plot zipped along like an express train, which is just what I wanted.

The hero is Thomas, an English archer tootling around France in 1347. Since this is during the Hundred Years' War, it's not the healthiest place to be. He's trying to find his French cousin, Guy, before Guy can find him first and kill him. He's fallen in love with a heretic (who's not such a heretic after all) and saves her from burning, so now the Church is after him as well. And meanwhile, his liege lord expects him to find the Grail.

I really ought to re-read it to study the technique, but here's one thing I noticed in passing. As Thomas's friend Robbie rides towards a monastery, one of the archers with him says, "We'll kill him, then the rest won't be no trouble."

Robbie snaps back, "You'll kill no one."

That exchange makes Robbie look good. Without it, at this point they're just a bunch of brigands raiding the countryside. This was probably normal behaviour at the time, but it doesn't endear you to modern readers, at least not this one.