Well, it's not like my mother had any familiarity with British or American children's literature so my exposure to it is pretty random.

Now that I think about that...neither does mine. But she had little to no control over what YA books I read, and a reasonably small amount over anything I read past age seven or so. Then it was all on everyone around me, because it was their shit I was stealing.

To be fair, that's not written by IO9 staff,

But surely that should be a cue to give it more editorial attention? Or any?

I think it's an extreme case, but I've gotten that first-draft-is-good-enough feel pretty consistently from all of the Gawker sites (and plenty of other content farms) and I just can't believe there's any serious editorial review. Which is why I usually avoid them now; if they don't value their own content, why should I?

I feel badly for the writers. They're learning how to meet deadlines, I suppose, but a good editor can teach you to be a much better writer, and they aren't getting that.

Now I'm rereading and I think Hec actually summed up my problem. I can't ignore the writing and focus on the meaning of an article -- even when the problems aren't as severe as in that particular piece.

But surely that should be a cue to give it more editorial attention? Or any?

I don't think those get edited at all, to be honest. I think they go up as a verbatim post that was also up somewhere else on the web. It's a thing they do, reuse other content.

That piece is HORRENDOUSLY incorrect. And I don't think it has a good enough point that I'd post it anyway, if the house rule were what I thought it was. But I read just about every IO9 article, and they're usually grammatically correct with good spelling.

It's not just grammar & spelling, but if they're usually correct at that level, I've had extraordinarily bad luck.

I just grabbed that movie review by their senior reporter and popped it into Word, which found 6 punctuation/grammar errors (ignoring the usual false positives). I'd say there are at least another half-dozen style problems, ranging from a grammar issue that Word didn't catch to stuff like:

(there's no daylight to indicate time or clocks).

And then the fact that she can't pick a POV. It's ugly writing and I can't see past it. (I'm not saying other people should react this way, but man, it really bugs me. Obviously.)

These are supposedly from actual books, which I guess they must be (I am envisioning the slush pile) because you couldn't make some of this shit up: [link]

eep! Stuff like this is why I never end up submitting anything I've written. What if I don't realize how much I suck?

What if I don't realize how much I suck?

You gotta getta beta, baby.

George RR Martin's publisher shows off the massive manuscrupt of A Dance with Dragons (so far).

I wrote a Kos post that I think belongs here...if you're ever on DK, the new Readers and Book Lovers group might be worth Buffistas' time. [link]