Something doesn't quite add up

When writers forget to do the math

We’re writers. Words are our business, and often math isn’t.

But when the numbers just don’t add up, readers notice — and everything else the writer says is suspect, too.

John Henry Foley was fourteen years older than Mae when they met in 1904. She was eighteen to his thirty.

If Mae was eighteen, and John Henry was fourteen years older, he was 32, not 30. (Even if you tweak birthdays to create the maximum difference.)

A bulky man in his thirties huffed his way up the path with two duffle bags balanceed on his back and hugging a second to his chest.

Ummm… even with new math, two plus one still equals three — so he’s hugging a third duffle (or duffel) bag to his chest.

Steve rotated the sandwich 18o degrees to crosshatch the ciabatta roll.

180 degrees is exactly half a circle. When a drill instructor yells, “About face!”, the troops turn 180 degrees and end up facing exactly the opposite direction from the position they started. Rotating a sandwich 180 degrees in a panini maker would create a second set of grill lines, but they’d be parallel to the first set. To make a pretty crosshatch, Steve would have to turn the sandwich 90 degrees.

The Snarky Editor also occasionally sees a character who “turns 360 degrees and reverses direction” — but since 360 degrees is a full circle, this character would end up in exactly the same position where he started, facing the same way.

The stone column called the Monument… designed to commemorate the Great Fire. It was 2005 feet high, said to be the tallest stone column in the world… 311 steps.

The Snarky Editor happens to have climbed Monument, located in the City of London near where the Great Fire started in 1666. All 311 uneven, narrow, triangular, challenging steps. So she knows quite well that the stone column is 202 feet tall (and located 202 feet west of the spot where the fire started).

That’s almost exactly one-tenth as high as this author made it. (Though a stone column 2005 feet tall — more than 20 stories high — would certainly be a contender, if not a shoo-in, for tallest stone column in the world!)

But even if she didn’t know that of her own experience, she can do the math. A 2005-foot-tall column containing a spiral staircase of 311 steps would mean that EACH STEP was 6.446 feet high. The Snarky Editor assures you that the climb was difficult enough without hauling a ladder along with her.

It wasn’t a big room because of space limitations… he wanted a cozy nook… The room only measured around six hundred square feet.

A six-hundred-square-foor room is 30 feet long and 20 feet wide. (Or it could be a square room that’s 24.49 feet on each side. Or it could be… well, anyway. You get the point.)

A 30 foot by 20 foot room is a big room. It’s half of a decent-sized house anywhere in middle America. Or, if it’s in a city, it’s more likely to be cut into a couple of studio apartments.

It’s hardly “a cozy nook.” Uncle Blake’s space limitations were apparently all in his head.

Here’s your challenge for the week from The Snarky Editor: What’s wrong with this explanation? You’ve already got a hint…

Put your explanation in the comments, and The Snarky Editor will spend the week thinking up a prize.

The Snarky Editor comes out of hiding occasionally to comment on the awkward, silly, and sometimes hilarious editing errors found in published books.

#snarkyeditor #everybodyneedsaneditor

Leigh Michaels is the award-winning author of more than 100 books, including historical and contemporary romance, non-fiction books about writing, and local history. More than 35 million copies of her books are in print in 27 languages and more than 120 countries. She is also a writing coach and book editor, though she promises to be snarky only in regard to published books.

To find out more, check out https://leighmichaels.com