Editing Rant: Distance

Image courtesy of nitinut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Check the simple stuff. If you have internet, check distances and dates. People know this stuff.

A book I just read – the main character has “lived her entire life within a seventy-five mile radius of her small <home> town” according to the blurb on the back. Two locations were named – the small town and a well-known third-tier city. I searched these two locations because passing off someone as a country hick that lived for an extended period of time with over a million other people annoyed me. Turns out the locations were 110 miles apart.

The book has a bunch of other issues with fact-checking and continuity. But this, THIS, inability to get distance right really, REALLY bugged me. All they needed to say was one hundred miles, not seventy-five.

Fact checking previously have been discussed

  1. Rosemary / Know your topic
  2. Other Cool Blogs / Futurama date check
  3. Medical topics
  4. Distances

Hint: If I keep coming back to a topic in the Editing Rants, (A) It’s Important and (B) People Keep Getting It Wrong.