pedantic pɪˈdantɪk/ adjective: pedantic excessively concerned with minor details or rules; overscrupulous.
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Sorry for this rant folks, but earlier today I witnessed a leading author and friend of mine being taken to task on Facebook by a nitpicking pedant. Without naming names, here are the comments in the order they were posted:-
Pedant – You missed a full stop and comma on page 93.
Author – I love you too.
Me in defence of my friend – Let me guess, you are perfect.
Author to me – Jack. As you know yourself, even with the best editors there’s always some errors that remain undetected.
Me – Exactly.
***
Idiots like this particular individual usually hide behind pseudonyms delivering their attacks via one star reviews. They are complete wankers! When it comes to pedants and other assorted toss pots I usually refrain from responding. But in this instance as the pedant in question was attacking a friend of mine on a public forum, using his own name. I think you get the picture…
So what if my friend’s publisher’s team of professional editors missed a full stop and a comma. Shit happens. Big f…ing deal!!! Sorry about the expletives here folks. Its just that I get heartily sick of these holier than thou idiots. Score one for all writers, and nil for pedants and others of their ilk…
Sooner or later every writer gets attacked by these morons, usually only via one star reviews. This was a heaven sent opportunity for one writer (me) to support another (my friend). It doesn’t help matters when online publishers and certain author groups in various social media sites declare that they see nothing wrong with writers being attacked by these low life scumbags.
😉
Have We Had Help? 
You should have used capitals in ‘W’ankers, ‘T’oss and ‘P’ots Jack (your furry non-pedant friend) lol 😀
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Aaw shuddup 😉
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You should talk Chris. Reading my Kindle copy of Cataclysm through yesterday, I found two errors both of us missed. In each case it involved a gap between the last letter in a word and the comma that followed. Mind you, they are the only errors in an almost perfect MS 😉
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Everything was OK in the version I read Jack, or I’d have told you – your fingers must have stuttered when uploading and pressing Publish 😀
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Yeh right, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. 🙂
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There he goes just a walkin’ down the street, ringing “Do wha diddy diddy dum diddy do” LOL 😀
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You’ll keep.
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😀 😀 😀
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Good on you for defending your friend and getting to a chance to have your say with an idiotic nitpicking reader. When will people understand that it isn’t always about perfect editing? Did the reader enjoy the story? I think that’s more important than a missed full stop and comma. Good grief! There is no way this many people were this good at English in school because if they were, I sure missed most of them.
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I couldn’t have put it better myself Crystal. 😀
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At the risk of you all showing me the door, I would have thanked the pedantic chap. He must have read the book really carefully to spot it, and quite frankly I’d be grateful for the opportunity to fix an (admittedly minor) typo.
The comments that I do shrug off have to do with style; e.g. “you should use fewer adverbs,” or “you use too many semicolons.” I’m like, “fine, when you write your book, use fewer adverbs and ban semicolons.”
But actual mistakes? I’m actually happy whenever someone catches one. Although the fact that it hasn’t happened in a while hopefully means that my books are by now as polished as they can possibly be. 🙂
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There is a right way of going about it, and the way this particular idiot chose Nicholas. All he had to do was click on the author’s name and send him a private message. Instead he chose to disengage his brain.
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Have you heard the fascinating story of someone who had called in on a radio show? This guy was shooting his mouth off with all sorts of nonsense. Just before the host cut him off, the caller screamed, “I exist!”
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🙂
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Pingback: Let me guess, you are perfect!!! | writerlywitterings
Not at all. 🙂
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The one that still makes me chuckle was the pedant who read my modern day title and immediately started complaining about the typos and misspellings. He (or she, can’t remember) had a significant rant on Amazon about my incompetence as an author, how they couldn’t believe I could have got so many spellings wrong, and how I couldn’t spell simple words like “color”. Which was the hint. A very kind American gentleman I know put the fellow correct. He had lived in Britain in the 50s and therefore knew about English spellings.
I’m always grateful to be warned about typos, but like Jack, I do prefer to have discussions about such matters off line. Email is much more polite. Besides, as in my reader’s case, it might only be opening the reader/aspiring editor to ridicule!
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Snap! I had one American accuse me of exactly the same thing a couple of years ago. What made me laugh is that he is an English teacher. LOL 🙂
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In many cases, the worst trolls are authors or wannabe authors who hide behind pseudonyms or use other minions to do their dirty work for them. Karma is a b and will catch up with them someday, perhaps when they attend book fairs with some of the people they’ve pissed off… >:^>
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😀
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Reblogged this on Have We Had Help? and commented:
Another oldy but goody from back in the day…
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