(no subject)

[opusculasedfera]

I love pissy and inaccurate marginal annotations in library books. This one has angrily crossed out the "state" in "state school" to write "provincial", which is a sort of correct as the school in question is in Ontario, but the author is from the UK, is writing for a UK audience, and clearly means "government-run, i.e. not privately owned." GOOD JOB, ANNOTATOR.

Less inaccurate, but equally endearing are the people who correct typos in library books. It's just so entirely futile and certainly doesn't improve the look of the thing, and we never seem to be talking about misprints that entirely change the meaning of a sentence, but a 'the' transposed to 'teh' which, honestly, I am just as likely to miss entirely as the copyeditor did if you don't draw attention to it with your pen scribbles.

(Underlining and highlighting in public books on the other hand is a social evil, and I will have no truck with it.)

Comments

[skygiants]

MARGINAL ANNOTATIONS ARE THE GREATEST

[opusculasedfera]

SOMETIMES, YES! :D

[skygiants]

Well I guess they are not invariably great. But they do pretty invariably fill me with hilarity, NO MATTER WHAT

[opusculasedfera]

I think I've seen too many dull ones? I like the lulzy ones, but people obscuring the text with markups and definitions are just irritating in library books. (Nothing whatsoever wrong with using books to learn new words, but DON'T WRITE IT IN THE LIBRARY COPY. ESPECIALLY NOT OVER SOME OTHER PORTION OF THE TEXT.)

[kyriacarlisle]

I one came across a truly peevish annotation correcting a typo in...I shit you not, How to Suppress Women's Writing.

[opusculasedfera]

...That is almost too perfect to be believed, in a horrible way. (Though, I find it oddly interesting that they called Russ an asshole, which isn't technically a gendered insult, but is certainly much less commonly said to women. It's almost like they were trying, but still missed the point of the book?)