Edit schmedit.

[erastes]

It's moving along, but gah! the mistakes one finds !!

I'm describing the Battle of Edgehill and I go and say that the right flank of the King'S cavalry attacked the right flank of the Parliament's.  Idiot!

Only if

1. they galloped diagonally across the flood plain OR

2. They were both facing in the same direction.

*kicks self*

I also mention SHRAPNEL.  Yeah. In 1642.  Riiiiight...... That would have been hard to live down as my fellow historical novelists laughed in my face.

It's a worry!

Comments

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

shrapnel is one of those pain the ass words that entered modern parlance and is the right word but wasn't the one they used at the time
so where do you draw the line with that kind of anachronism, because when they did run out of musket balls they used anything to hand, broken bits of tools, cutlery (he was killed by a spoon sir!) broken glass, sand, wood, anything that could go in the cannon, usually in a wet sack (to stop it burning) they'd do it with their muskets too
some of the ones that baffle me are words we think are very modern and aren't like gay (there are arguments about this because victorian novels refer to gays as prostitutes and the word could come from it as much as the acronym), calling a penis a cock is medieval, 19th century gay bavarians were called spinach pokers (it kills me, makes no sense but invariably gives me the giggles) cunt is medieval,
i have a very funny poem about a chicken somewhere that is literally the most pornographic thing you could ever read and it's from the dark ages
it's that whole anachronism thing, as a modern woman writing it you can use the word shrapnel in author voice but the characters can't and that's where I always draw the line
I find that reading a lot from the period helps which would be your thomas kyd, marlowe (shakespeare was wordy) up to maybe milton,
I like words - the fascinate me

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm a word-geek too. Not an expert by any means.

I know that my characters - in mid 17th C - wouldn't really be speaking the way they are, and that's the fine line one has to tread the further you go back - you can't write a book in middle-english for example because no-one would read it. But I do try hard to avoid words that will jolt some readers out of the period. I know that fuck was used, for example in times gone past, but not in the same way like "oh, FUCK!" when you drop a hammer on your toe or something, and you see that a lot in gay historical fiction these days.

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

do you know the work of Barry Unsworth, he writes using medieval pacing but with modernish words, but his characters use medieval slang, they're not that hard to read either
words change meaning, for example nunnery used to mean brothel now is another word for convent
did you know tolkien invented the word dwarves, the correct plural is dwarrow, it fascinates me, and you can learn so much about something just looking up where the word comes from
that's how geeky i get, I can spot latinate, norman or saxon a mile off, and the odd buggers like paradise which is persian.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

words change meaning, for example nunnery used to mean brothel now is another word for convent

Which changes the whole context of Hamlet telling Ophelia to get herself to a nunnery. There's quite a big difference between "oh, go be a nun" and "oh, go join a whorehouse."

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

he is telling her to get to a brothel
most people often seem a little surprised that he thinks so very little of her
but then again at that period it wasn't unusual for the bishop and abbesses to rent out their nuns like that for extra money
which is probably where the confusion comes from