When almost the right word just isn’t good enough… A few head-scratching examples, found in published books, of how the author almost got it right.
“I can practically feel the vitamin D soaking into my pours”
Pouring down on her pores, perhaps.
“My heart swelled at the name, but I tampered it down”
Tamped means to pound, tampered means to mess with.
“I pushed the break and read the sign again. Thankfully there’s no one driving behind me…”
Breaks are found in workdays, brakes are found in cars.
“Lana would add her own flare to the decorations.”
And maybe a traffic cone, too, as well as a flare? She has a flair for design.
“A yellowed glass lamp hung in the corner of the ceiling; its brown power chord ran through a decorative chain to an outlet”
Pianos produce chords, but lamps use cords.
“The house was seeped in magic.”
Magic might be seeping from every pore, but the house is steeped in magic.
“You’ve proven yourself imminently capable.”
Imminently means any minute now, eminently means very
“Jane, her longtime assistant, fact totem, and friend…”
No idea what a fact totem is (a totem pole full of carved trivia?), but a factotum is an employee who does all kinds of work.
“You’re so high and mighty on your thrown that everybody tiptoes around you.”
Kings sit on thrones. (Autocorrect is NOT your friend.)
“She had aspirations to some day be paid to right feature news stories…”
Sigh. When a writer doesn’t know that what she’s doing is writing, not righting, it’s a sad old world.
The Snarky Editor comes out of hiding occasionally to comment on the awkward, silly, and sometimes hilarious editing errors found in published books.
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