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Loved your rant! I am the daughter of two working class/middle class immigrants. my mother, had almost no education-- a chronic illness in pre antibiotics days left her an invalid from age 8 or so till post WWII when with a shot or two of penicillin, she went from constant fevers of chorea -"St Vitus dance" to a 90% healthy adult. (some residual heart valve damage). my da went to vocational school...
I am very bright--as a child IQ tested above 165-- but i grew up in a household with out books-- my parents read, and i had free access to a library, but no guidance. and being a baby boomer, i was in over crowded school class--at one point 81 children where packed into a class designed for 40 to 50--which is still way to big. And then too, it was a parochial school–(catholic) so my education was further limited*
my ex husband was convinced part of my bad spelling was, 1-no dictionary at home, 2--no attention at school.
but it spite of all this, i learned to read-- and to read more than fiction (mum still reads 95% fiction) and to collect dictionaries. (first edition Partridges', chambers, dictionaries of idioms, all sorts of dictionaries.) to go on to get a degree..
but i am very aware that i missed a lot of the finer points of being educated person. my reading has saved me, but as I mentioned on of the threads, when i first read Wodenhouse, i didn't find it funny. I had no ideas about upper class society, or golf, or butlers. When PBS (Public Broadcasting System) first aired "Jeeves"icould see it was funny, but I couldn't see it on the page. I had no context.
as industrials countries create more opportunities-- people like me get educated... but we are a step or two behind those of you who where lucky enough to grow up in an environment that right from the beginning, offered you guidance and exposure to books, literature, grammar!
so cut us some slack!
* Shanks did a bit about Indian history vs. English history–
In the catholic church view, there was a "good queen mary" Most of the rest of the world knows her as "bloody mary" (daughter of Henry VIII).
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Helen--
(By the way, if you prefer that I stick with 'of troy', I will, but I'm afraid with that screen name I'd be calling you Helen if your name was Esmerelda!)
My Dear, my Dear--bless you, there are all kinds of education. Book-learning isn't everything, though it does
offer a lot. And, you know, it's never too late, if it's something you'd really like to make up for. I keep reading
about older people going back to school and feeling petrified, and invariably they have a good time. There are
also adult ed. classes in most areas. I'm not telling you you should--that's strictly an individual decision--just saying that there are possibilities.
I can plainly see that there is a whole heckuva lot that you could teach me, and quite a few others, I suspect. You may have all the slack you want, Dear One, as far as I'm concerned. To borrow from an absolutely wonderful post that I read so long ago I've forgotten its author, you are the only one who has had your experiences, and therefore we all can learn something from you. I admire your courage, my Dear.
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Thank you Jackie (and yes, of course I am Helen–with the face to sink a thousand ship! Ah such power!)
You demonstrate such grace, and guess what I should have said, (more or less quoting from the coal miners daughter– I (and many others) are sometime ignorant, but not stupid!
unless you've run across perquisite, which is so rarely written or even said, and so often just "perks" you might not know the word– it does look like 'prerequisites' so it is a mistake an ignorant person can make. But we are all ignorant of some things! Not to be pendantic, but be pendantic!
I follow Mark Twain's advice– I read a lot, and try to hang about smarter (than me!) people!–(you guys!) I read every post! And before I ever posted any thing, I read almost every thread on main page.. I haven't yet read all the old pages
WOW, you ask how could it not be obvious? But that "jeeves" was funny was not at all obvious to me.. I thought the books dull– always going on about ripping good times, and cocktail parties (poor me, I have never been to a cocktail party!– I've been to cocktail hours before dinner, but a small party for drinks, before the theater? What! The hour before the theater was spent on the subway getting to the theater!)
I also hated "Little Women" when I first read it as a child– Jo carrying on about how poor they were: they had a house, she had her own room! and books! The family had cook! And piano lessons, and art lessons! I didn't think myself poor–(but was a lot closer to poor– in HS my family was poor enough to qualify me for ‘free lunch' in school)
– we lived in an apartment, no books, no piano, and I had to content mysef with the 16 pack of crayons– I was an adult before I ever own 64 crayons! but I could walk (and did!) a mile or two to the NY botanical gardens, and to the bronx zoo.. And just fifteen cents would take me to museum of natural history (free, like most of ny museums)--and libraries! my nieghborhood boasted a 4 story building--it went from one block to the next, too. (you could enter on Marion Ave. or on Bainbridge! It was one of the largest building in the area! I had all of the world for as my back yard! I had no empathy for Jo or any of the March's! Was I stupid? Or just ignorant of the context of the book? When I articulated my dislike for the book in elementary school, one of the nuns was enraged! How could I not like this wonderful book, these wonderful characters– Jo had such nobility! but most of the nuns in my school were middle class and educated!
but i liked WOW's rant-- someone has to keep up the standards! don't go depending on me! (standards? there are standards? she sez, craning her neck looking for them!)
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...describe the regular patrons of a bar. "Dregulars."...
During the long ago days of my well misspent youth (well, almost youth) I was an habitué of a bar in Flagstaff, AZ called the Latin Quarter. We who ruled the place called ourselves LQholics.
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Goodness of Troy. You seem quite upset about the whole thing. Please do not feel offended by the following... I agree that people who only look at the spelling are quite annoying since they are not really listening to what you have to say; only waiting for a chance to show their superiority in the language. Those people are really easy to spot, and honestly, there are none here. Here you have a group of people who are truly interested in the English language and all its nuances. You have punsters and pedants and everything in between. If an error is brought to our attention, it is not to ridicule, but to inform. To date, I have not seen any knuckle rapping pertaining to incorrect grammar or spelling. I have seen the wink-wink, nudge-nudge type of jibes that often pass among friends – all in good humour. Especially since most errors are of the obvious "3:30 in the morning after pulling an all-night AWAD session" mistyping  – and we know it. You seem to have had a tough time of it growing up and anyone who rises through sheer will deserves to be commended. But doesn't education continue throughout one's life? Is it preferable to write incorrectly because it was hard to learn, or to continue learning in order to write correctly? This one is up to you. Please remember though, that this is a board about words – and words are important to us. For example, what we were talking about in this thread are editors who left glaring errors in books we have read. An editor is supposed to know the language inside-out, and if he is unsure about something, he is supposed to have the tools to figure it out. Finding an error in a book shows a lack of professionalism by that editor. It was not an attack on you, nor was it aimed at you at all. I am sorry you felt pinpointed.
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Allo, me again of Troy,
I am a little confused concerning a point you brought up. I was educated in a Catholic school (those are just about the only ones available in Québec) and do not feel penalized by it. We had French Catholic and English Catholic and they were of similar quality. I did notice you referred to <shank's bit about Indian history vs. English history>. Are you of Indian descent? Are Indian-Catholic schools in New York considered to be of lower quality?
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> Not to be pendantic, but be pendantic! not to be pedantic (or didactic, for that matter), but...
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Allo tsuwm choux, Colour me clueless but what are you saying? Je ne comprends pas 
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tsuwm...what are you saying?
He took out the n, flying in the face of the preceding posts, that's what he did.
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...and I thought I was quite ostentatious about it, thank you very much. 
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