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Subject:Re: homophones From:Vicki Rosenzweig <murphy!acmcr!vr -at- UUNET -dot- UU -dot- NET> Date:Mon, 24 Jan 1994 13:40:04 EST
One that's annoying me, from a couple of weeks ago: I bought
Octavia Butler's new novel, _Parable of the Sower_, in hardcover
(published by Four Walls Eight Windows). It's a well-written
novel (though grim), but I kept getting annoyed by the lack of
proofreading. It seems that they just fed it through a spell-checker.
Lots of little things: "peddling" for "pedaling" and repeated use
of "it's" for "its," which are annoying in the daily paper and,
in my not so humble opinion, inexcusable in a $22 hardcover novel.
One or two I could have overlooked, but I resented having paid the
higher price for what is supposed to be a better production job,
and not gotten it.
But the worst thing I've seen lately (not strictly a homophone,
I suppose) is "its'" instead of "its." The it's/its confusion,
while annoying, at least has the minimal justification that both
are real words: there is no excuse for "its'."
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr%acmcr -dot- uucp -at- murphy -dot- com
New York, NY
