"A taught chassis","a flair of revs","a heard of cows", ...
Discussion
... do homophone errors bother anyone else when reading about cars?
I'm enjoying a nice piece of car journalism, soaking up the detail and putting myself in the writer's shoes, when I hit a speed bump. That word doesn't belong there, what do they mean? Oh I see, they meant the other word that's spoken the same way.
Dickie Meaden's otherwise excellent evo piece on the Aston Martin Victor was punctured by two - 'embarrassed at my gaff' and 'every flair in revs'. The 'taught' chassis came up in a PH article lately, and a 'heard' of animals elsewhere.
I assume that the rise of word processing and spellcheck has led to a concomitant reduction in human proofreading, and the computer is powerless to catch most of these errors since the offending word is spelt correctly, it's just the wrong word for the sentence.
So my question is, does it spoil other people's enjoyment of reading about cars? Or do you not even notice, or not care? If it's just me then I'll stop being a pedant and try to re-train myself to ignore it, and accept the evolution of the English language. I don't want to come across as picky and unappreciative. OTOH if others feel the same way then I'll keep looking for ways to flag up these mistakes to the authors.
PS is this where we're headed?
I'm enjoying a nice piece of car journalism, soaking up the detail and putting myself in the writer's shoes, when I hit a speed bump. That word doesn't belong there, what do they mean? Oh I see, they meant the other word that's spoken the same way.
Dickie Meaden's otherwise excellent evo piece on the Aston Martin Victor was punctured by two - 'embarrassed at my gaff' and 'every flair in revs'. The 'taught' chassis came up in a PH article lately, and a 'heard' of animals elsewhere.
I assume that the rise of word processing and spellcheck has led to a concomitant reduction in human proofreading, and the computer is powerless to catch most of these errors since the offending word is spelt correctly, it's just the wrong word for the sentence.
So my question is, does it spoil other people's enjoyment of reading about cars? Or do you not even notice, or not care? If it's just me then I'll stop being a pedant and try to re-train myself to ignore it, and accept the evolution of the English language. I don't want to come across as picky and unappreciative. OTOH if others feel the same way then I'll keep looking for ways to flag up these mistakes to the authors.
PS is this where we're headed?
Edited by samoht on Sunday 24th July 11:03
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