Lines From Historicals That Have Made You *FacePalm*

Not from a novel but overheard this week - "We had a verbal conversation." (Sign of the times?) Puma

Sorry to continue the derail, but along the lines of Puma:

my hubby: when did you talk to J?
me: I don't know, 3-4 weeks ago
him: did you guys have a fight?
me: no, we IM all the time, I spoke to her a few weeks ago

MM

And a twenty-two skiddoo to you, too.

Sorry, my company just decided to add me to the Procurement department as an expediter. After thirty odd years as a technical writer/editor, my brain is going a bit haywire at having to move out of its accustomed grooves.

My fellah and I often discuss the rapid change of our language. My personal pet peeve in historical settings in the moment is "He or she disrespected me." In anything prior to about 2001, shouldn't that be "He or she showed disrespect?" I don't recall ever hearing it used as a verb prior to that or is it something regional that has only recently crept into the national usage?

EngineerTiger said:

My fellah and I often discuss the rapid change of our language. My personal pet peeve in historical settings in the moment is "He or she disrespected me." In anything prior to about 2001, shouldn't that be "He or she showed disrespect?" I don't recall ever hearing it used as a verb prior to that or is it something regional that has only recently crept into the national usage?

Click to expand...

True. 'Discrimination' is another altered word. Being referred to as discriminating used to be a high compliment, and had little to do with racism.

I don't get that too much. The last historical fiction I read was Harold Lamb, who is pretty dead-on.

From many, many years ago I recall a bit from one of Barry Sadler's Casca novels (yeah I know, not exactly historical in the same way as Mary Renault) where a 2nd century Teutonic type calls someone "turnip-dick". At the time I thought that was just not done. In retrospect I must concede that Iron-Age Northern Europe, did in fact posses an abundance of turnips, not to mention male anatomies. In fact, it's one of the things I remember best from those books, so perhaps Sadler knew what he was doing. If only he'd been as careful with gun safety.

Just curious have you read Howard Fast's Spartacus? I have not, though the movie is one of my favorites. I think I'll remedy that in the near future.

This is a particular problem with Regency romance novels. The author will use a word or phrase that's "off," and never spot it, and then the editor doesn't notice either.

I do, and it makes me wince.

Definitely not in use in those eras.

I read a YA book recently called Don't Think Twice by Ruth Pennebaker. The story is set in 1967 Texas at an unwed mother's home. In the story, the main character screams at the nurse in the hospital how its her "friggin' baby we're talking about here! I want to see my baby!" I thought that sounded too modern (1990s or 2000s rather than the 1960s) due to the fact that when someone doesn't actually say the "f" word, they say "friggin'" or "fricken" in place of it all the time. But someone told me that what the character said was correct even for that time period. It's a low-brow expression, but it was used, just not as often as today. It was fascinating. I've read historkcal fiction books or stoies that make me wince at what the characters say--it just sounds "off" to me and not with the correct era they're supposedly writing about. But at times, it can be right, like my example above.

-Kristi

gothicangel said:

Same here.

I do wonder how they never spot it [I also found a sentence with the word 'do' missing as well. Makes me wonder where the editor was. I haven't published a novel before, but I wonder how such things happen. I'm editing, and the errors I pick out by reading aloud are too numerous to mention.

Click to expand...

I can't begin to tell you how many errors I find in commercially published fiction by big name authors. Missing words, wrong words, homonym errors, characters changing names, spelling changes in made-up words, etc. I don't know if this is a somewhat recent development, or if I just notice it more since I started beta reading. I've gotten so I just shrug and keep going.

MM

Oh yes, in many published books I've seen horrid sentences, wrong names given to even minor characters, misspelled words, missing words in general, errors in grammar usage etc. It's all there. Maybe they don't have enough people to look over their work before it gets published. You are too close to your own work, even if you went through your story several times before, you'll still find typos and such. I know I have with my stories. Having two or even three sets of eyes read your story for those things would be very useful in the long run. People you choose to edit/beta/proofread (whatever you want to call it) need to know a thing or two about the rules of writing, proper grammar usage, spelling, sentence structure etc. You can't hand it over to your best friend, who may know nothing about writing stories or writing at all, only to have them say, "That story was very good!" It's best to find those who are knowledgable and know how to write.

-Kristi

I can't remember the last published book I read that didn't have errors. Often times, they're very simple things that should have been caught, but from personal experience I know those are actually the hardest ones to see. As writers we read over them because we know what they're supposed to be and I think editors and readers do the same thing. Puma

I was quite surprised to discover, not all too long ago, that "disrespect," as a verb, dates to the 17th century and in fact predates its use as a noun by a couple of decades.

Proof-reading is an art. That's because our brains are very clever and will try to adjust the symbols it sees. Typos of common words are especially difficult to catch. How often I have seen OF when it should have been OFF and vice-versa when I've edited one of the engineer's papers.

I had a service manual once that had been through seven reviews by a team of nine. At the final meeting, I spotted a typo we had all missed that had been in the document from the beginning.

Consequently, these little typos will make it through even the most dedicated proofing team. I tend to not fret about those.

NDoyle, that's interesting. I have never come across that usage in early documents. Were they English or Colonial?

I've heard mix things on this, but I was told that doctors back in olden times DID NOT make their patients drunk before amputating something.

I read this in a book about the Civil War--fiction--where a doctor asks the nurse why she didn't get the boy drunk before they started to hack off his leg.

Alcohol thins the blood and thus makes the wound bleed more...or so I've heard.

Also, speaking of words we didn't know were around way back when; shagged meant sex back in the 1860s. I saw it in a letter when I did my internship.

Belle_91 said:

I've heard mix things on this, but I was told that doctors back in olden times DID NOT make their patients drunk before amputating something.

I read this in a book about the Civil War--fiction--where a doctor asks the nurse why she didn't get the boy drunk before they started to hack off his leg.

Alcohol thins the blood and thus makes the wound bleed more...or so I've heard.

Also, speaking of words we didn't know were around way back when; shagged meant sex back in the 1860s. I saw it in a letter when I did my internship.

Click to expand...

Well, by the 1860s they had better painkillers than mere whiskey. Ether and laudanum (whiskey + opium) and other opiates were available. Unless of course you ran out in the midst of treating thousands of battle casualties. And I suppose there were always doctors with their own theories on pain management. IIRC in the 1840s when anesthesia was coming into use, there was a counter-theory that held pain promoted healing in surgery patients.

Interesting note about shagged.

I honestly don't know if it's true or not. Again, I'm not a medical student by any means. Also, there were quacks who might have used just whiskey because they sadly didn't know any better.

Brandy was used extensively in Richmond during the Civil War for amputations. That is because of the Northern blockade, they couldn't get the opiates and other drugs. When the brandy ran out, the surgeons amputated without anything. Also, there was nothing to fight infection so amputation was the only way to stop it from spreading.

EngineerTiger said:

Brandy was used extensively in Richmond during the Civil War for amputations. That is because of the Northern blockade, they couldn't get the opiates and other drugs. When the brandy ran out, the surgeons amputated without anything. Also, there was nothing to fight infection so amputation was the only way to stop it from spreading.

Click to expand...

That's the "bite this stick" method of pain management. One strong point is that it's not addictive and does not require a prescription. Oh wait, that's two strong points.

Leather was preferred as sticks were apt to break.

All of the opiates were highly addictive. The post-Civil War and WWI had a high rate of addicter veterans due to laudanum and later morphine.

EngineerTiger said:

Leather was preferred as sticks were apt to break.

All of the opiates were highly addictive. The post-Civil War and WWI had a high rate of addicter veterans due to laudanum and later morphine.

Click to expand...

They're still addictive.

I recently read a novel set in the late 1800s where, during the steamy love scenes (more than one), the main character proceeded to remove her panties.

(For those who are unaware, panties, as such, didn't exist as such until the late 1910s - early 1920s. Prior to that, women wore loose, knee-length drawers, which are quite different from panties. The weird thing is, Dictionary.com says that the word "panties" (plural for "panty") originated in 1835-1845. The problem being that panties simply didn't exist at that point. Either the date is erroneous or it's referring to some other object. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the term "panties" dates to 1908, which makes a lot more sense, given that they didn't exist until the 20th century, but it still seems a bit early, given what I know about the history of underwear. Confusing!)