Dear Author:

[nightdog_barks]

I do not think this sentence conveys the information you think it conveys.

Two years later his older brothers started enlisting one after another in the Union Army to fight the Yankees, leaving only the three youngest -- Hiram, Absalom, and Frank, age eleven, nine, and seven -- to work the farm under their father for the duration of the war.

Bolding mine, for emphasis.

Comments

[namaste]

We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

[nightdog_barks]

I swear to God I had to stop and reread that sentence two or three times to make it really register.

[namaste]

Perhaps I needed a Kelly/Pogo icon.

[nightdog_barks]

Here you go --



Done on the fly, so it's pretty rough. *g*

[silverjackal]

:D Slipped by the author *and* the editor. What makes it so amusing to me is that I spotted it right away, and I don't know that much about U.S. history.

[nightdog_barks]

It's a slip-up the approximate size of a supernova. An elephant trying to hide behind a thimble.

*g*

[pwcorgigirl]

Oookay. From what deathless work is that taken?

[nightdog_barks]

The Pearl Buck biography. Between this and the "wretching" in The Passage, I'm thinking of starting a collection of howlers in professionally-authored and published books.

;-D

[pwcorgigirl]

You know, it's impossible from that sentence to tell which side the family was on! And such a compilation of big old groaners would be fun! :D

I gave away the Dresden Files novel with the author's glaring grammatical error in the dedication to his father, which made me cringe and hope his dad's either dead or illiterate. And early editions of Stephen King's "The Stand" had a gigantic plot point that hinged on a character finding a chocolate smudge from a Payday candy bar on the page of her journal, when Paydays aren't made with chocolate.

[nightdog_barks]

Ha! I think I've got one of those early editions -- I remember that detail of the Payday candy bar.

[taiga13]

(Inigo Montoya impression) "I do not think it means what you think it means."

[nightdog_barks]

Exactly!

:-D

[taiga13]

Once for an undergrad paper on population growth, I wrote "women had smaller families" and then changed it to "woman had fewer children". Or I thought it did. I proofread it more than once, only to get it back from the professor with the words "women had smaller children" circled.

[blackmare]

I made an icon for that. Care to narf it? I don't need credit or anything.

[nightdog_barks]

Heh, I may take you up on that. *g*

[topaz_eyes]

Now I've heard of infighting, but that takes it to a whole new level. 0.o

[nightdog_barks]

COUSIN AGAINST COUSIN! BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER! ATLANTA BURNS! SCARLETT MAKES A DRESS!

OH THE HUMANITY.

Heh.

[hannah]

It's a suitably epic mistake, at the very least.

[nightdog_barks]

Excellently true.

*g*

[verbal_kint]

HUMAN SACRIFICE, CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER...MASS HYSTERIA!