#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 24 Share a silly mistake you've made while writing.
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@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross
It's only slightly annoying when unoccutrousers fall down, but mortifying when one's occutrousers fall down.@dragonfrog @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @cstross
If an octopus gentleman's occutrousers fall down, everyone can see his tentacles!
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@alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross yu. I changed a character's name from Roy to Fred, and had him sailing up the Channel in a destfreder.
@robparsons @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross And this is how a certain right-wing newspaper came to run an article about the American athlete, Tyson Homosexual.
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@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross it's the wrong occutrousers, and they've gone wrong!
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@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross Clear case of idiot editor. Because one obviously can be space sensitive and only replace " pants " with " trousers " and th[e]n this should be no problem.
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@cstross Always check for the word boundaries
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@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross another book did this and resulted in particitrousers...
@quixoticgeek @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross
Someoneneeds to pad theirsearch terms with appropriate whitespace (hi, @edwinb - who really understands whitespace). -
@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross another book did this and resulted in particitrousers...
"It's the wrong trousers, Gromit!"
(That said, there now needs to be a protest-movement called Occutrousers. The name just says something definitive about careless use of technology. (See also: "cdesign proponentsists"))
@alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross
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PS to "silly mistakes": a common misconception is that copy editors will spot your silly mistakes. They might ... but then again, they might think the mistake was the authorial intention and let it pass. CEs vary wildly in their approach (never say competence) and your trad publisher's commissioning editor is busy managing workflow (editing gets done on the side, in their own time).
So don't rely on the editors cleaning up your messes.
I do know that by the time I hand over the manuscript to my copy editor, I have read it myself three times, with multiple months passing between the readings.
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@cstross
The good old "dawizard" from D&D comes to mind.
Hint for the unitiated: 4d6 dawizard. -
@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross clbuttic mistake
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@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross "buttbuttination of the ambbuttador"…
@blotosmetek @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross At one point I had a very Christian co-worker who regularly used to shorten Home Assistant to Home Ass. It wouldn't have been worth the trouble to point it out ...
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@owent a true "postcode file" on windows moment
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@davidtheeviloverlord @cstross I remember an early harry potter book where one of the characters said something apartmently.
The divine afflatus fell apart mentally.
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@quixoticgeek @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross
Someoneneeds to pad theirsearch terms with appropriate whitespace (hi, @edwinb - who really understands whitespace).@WellsiteGeo @quixoticgeek @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @edwinb No, they need to pad their search terms with non-word atoms (regular expressions are your friend!), i.e. \W+(search_word)\W+ (in perl-compatible regexp syntax).
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@editer @towo In the 2000s, Macmillan's corporate IT department installed a bad word filter *on their incoming email*. It finally got nuked after Tom Doherty (CEO of Tor) stormed their boardroom ranting furiously because the incoming email filter had repeatedly eaten the manuscript of a scheduled bestseller that Production were waiting on. (Turns out publishers get novels via email and novels frequently contain rude words: who could possibly have imagined *that* in a publisher's IT department?)
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@SmartmanApps @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross "one of these is *not* a banana. Can you find out which one?"
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@owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross Clear case of idiot editor. Because one obviously can be space sensitive and only replace " pants " with " trousers " and th[e]n this should be no problem.
@DJRNDM @owent @alicemcalicepants @nullcolaship @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross well, that doesn't quite work, because "pants." — but you're not wrong.
