Random House Canada fails high school English

Ed. here. Since the blog belongs to me today, my words will appear in Roman letters, not italics. [Italics are mine. Walt.] Ahem... The blog is mine because the topic is proper English, knowledge of which seems to be lacking even at venerable publishing houses such as Random House Canada, part of the vast [or half-vast] organization known simply as Random House, "the world's largest English language trade publisher".

Things being a little slow here, I checked Random House's Canadian and international websites under "careers", thinking perhaps they would be looking for editors or at least proofreaders. Apparently not.

But why would I think there might be such a vacancy? Because I have just finished reading Peter Newman's When the Gods Changed: the Death of Liberal Canada (RHC, 2011) which appears to have been published without any proofing beyond what might have been done by a spell-check utility.

The quality of the output is, frankly, shocking. Errors of vocabulary, grammar, spelling and even punctuation abound. Here are some of them, shown in bold, with page numbers so you can check for yourself.

Before the "Introduction", there are two untitled pages which I suppose might be called a preface. On p. xii we find "This incidence of non-recognition..." Arrrggghhhh. Didn't we just post "'Incidents' vs 'incidence' -- what's the difference?". Oh wait, that was just this past July -- too late for Mr. Newman. [But he's even older than I am. He should know better! Walt]

Page 71 - "each new wave of Grits hot off the grittle" - I'm hoping this is not a spelling error, but an intentional neologism, a play on "Grits" which is slang for (Canadian) Liberals.

Page 80 - "until the midfifties" - "mid-fifties", surely, or possibly "mid-50s".

Page 102 - "waking a spectacular international decision" - How do you "wake" a decision? Perhaps Mr. Newman writes in longhand and the typesetter can't tell his M's from his W's.

Page 164 - "humming 'Il a perdu son epaulettes'" - Should be either "ses épaulettes" or "son épaulette". If you don't speak French, don't try to write it and expect an anglophone proofreader to fix it for you.

Page 224 - "'We're looking at a growing gap between the successive previous generation of immigrants like my dad, and the generation coming in from Africa and Asia.'" - Supposedly quoting Michael Ignatieff. What is a "successive previous generation"? Did Iggy actually say "successful"?

Page 236 - "...to send the matters to their respective parliamentary committees for consideration; he committees found..." - Missing a T there, but the spell-checker wouldn't catch that.

Page 242 - "After the first week of the campaign, Ignatieff's approval rating jump from nineteen percent to twenty-five percent..." - Tense trouble.

Page 256 - "[The Conservatives]...came under the leadership of nineteen individuals, many of whom gave anonymity of big boost." - What does this mean?

Page 264 - "To shift the burden of justified criticism on to his shoulders..." - Should be "onto", and yes, there is such a preposition.

Page 266 - "aimed at demoralizing Michael Ignatieff" - Supposedly from a "partial transcript" of an interview with Peter Donolo. My guess is Donolo said "demonizing", not "demoralizing", although Ignatieff probably was demoralized.

Noted twice - a member of a municipal council would be a "councilor" in the USA, but a "councillor" in Canada.

And finally, the piece of resistance (as Mr. Newman might have said)... Page 218 - "There has been a hard edge in the Conservative's pursuit of national competitiveness..." GAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! Does he really mean just one Conservative? No, this is clearly an apostrophe error, committed by Mr. Newman [who should know better. Walt] or an editor or proofreader who doesn't know how to construct a plural as opposed to a possessive.

Those at Random House or elsewhere large who weren't paying attention in Grade 8 English should read "Apostrophe Catastrophe" and "Let's kill the apostrophe ???". You're welcome.

Short book review from Walt: Leaving aside the problems with English usage noted by Ed., is When the Gods Changed worth reading? No. Fifty years ago, when he wrote for Maclean's and authored Renegade in Power (about the Diefenbaker years), Peter Newman was a crackerjack political commentator.

His last opus was supposed to be about the making of a prime minister. Such was the working title. Sadly for him (and RHC) Ignatieff led the Liberals to the worst defeat in their history, and quickly resigned. Mr. Newman was left with under 300 pages (including generous leading) of shoulda/woulda/coulda. The book is proof positive that even a skilled writer can't make something out of nothing.

The distemper of our times

Apologies to Peter Newman for borrowing the title of his excellent book on Canada in the 60s -- the Diefenbaker years. Click here to find out more about the book and where you can buy it. No, Walt doesn't get a commission, but commends it to you as a good commentary on the malaise of the hippy-dippy 60s. That decade was when the rot set it.

Fast forward to 1995, and the gentle, implacable warning of Father Gilbert Simard, a priest from St. Joachim, Ontario.

"To me, there is a longing in the heart of the people...to find what held our communities together thirty or forty years ago, and is not there now.

"There has been, in government, in the past ten, fifteen, even twenty years, a shift away from the Judaeo-Christian values that have always been the basis of our legislation, our conduct with each other, and our conduct with the community. We have lost the sense of that. We have lost the sense of values that our predecessors gave to us."

Father Simard said that to Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson 15 years ago. Today his words seem even more wise ... and sadly prescient.