Fictional plot holes (was: The Romance)

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> Oh, I don't think I'm the only human being on this planet who still knows how to spell. One or two English teachers must have noticed it, and the copyeditor should have caught it. It's spelled correctly in PoA but misspelled in SS/PS and CoS
> 
md:
> 
> :::RAISES HAND:::
> 
> I'm an English Teacher!!! And hey, guess what, teaching English and being a pro-speller does not go hand-in-hand.

Carol:
All too true, unfortunately. I know of a second-grade English teacher who couldn't spell herself and encouraged her students to ignore spelling and just write because she was afraid (so she said) that learning correct spelling would restrict their creativity. (I think she was just making excuses. After all, children at that age can still memorize much easier than older children, teenagers, and adults, which is why they can still memorize the multiplication table--if it's taught. These days, at least in one school that I know of, it's on the kids' desks!)

md:
> Also, remember that they stopped editing so close between UK and US versions after POA. 

Carol:
That has nothing to do with it. The incorrect spelling is in the first two books; the correct spelling is in the third. And it's not a question of UK spelling vs. American spelling ("colour" vs. "color"), which would obviously be changed, along with UK punctuation and, occasionally, grammar ("Ministry are" vs. Ministry is") for the American editions, or of British vocabulary ("jumper") being changed to the U.S. equivalent ("sweater"), which is the sort of thing that Scholastic stopped editing so closely after PoA.

md:
> And since many consider "miniscule" to be just find, it's possible one editor with your sensibilities changed it when another, like me, left it! 

Carol:
Many whom or what? Most American publishers require copyeditors to use standard spelling, meaning the preferred or main spelling listed for a particular word in Merriam-Webster's eleventh Collegiate Dictionary, just as they require them to follow the Chicago Manual of Style for hyphenation, punctuation, capitalization, spelling out of numbers, etc. It looks to me like a typo that the copyeditor didn't catch (there are others, but I can't remember them now).

md:
> MS Word, btw, doesn't correct either spelling and Merriam-Webster says both are find, so loosen up! It's not Nukular or anything!

Carol:
It's not a matter of loosening up. I was half-joking when I said "one or two English teachers." I'm actually quite sure that many people besides me (a high school spelling champion, longtime college English teacher with a PhD, and copyeditor) still know how to spell, though I do fear that it's becoming a lost art. 

As for Word, which I use all the time in my work, it's a very imperfect system. The fact that it doesn't consider "miniscule" an error (my Seascape spell check *does* mark it as an error) just indicates that the Microsoft people designed their program for office workers, not editors. Word also marks "yourself" and other reflexive pronouns as errors even when they're used correctly. (Admittedly, it's pretty good at catching passive voice sentences, though.)

As for Merriam-Webster, "miniscule" is listed only as a variant of "minuscule" (it became one because so many people mistakenly associated it with "mini" rather than "minus", but a copyeditor would be required to use the primary spelling, the one with the definition following it. I know because I *am* a copyeditor.

I'm not condemning the whole series because of that particular error. I'm just noting it as an example of things that the copyeditor should have caught (as that particular error was in PoA). He or she also should have caught the dangling modifiers, which start becoming noticeable around GoF. My impression, at least in the later books, is that the editors at all levels became more lax, or more afraid of making or suggesting corrections (British English aside--they were right to leave that as is unless a British term sounds obscene in American English), around GoF--as if they were afraid of the great and powerful Oz, erm, JKR. Of course, tight deadlines may also have had something to do with it. I can see the publishers recommending what is called in publishing "a light edit"--just typos, misused words (e.g. "conscious" for "conscience," not that JKR makes that particular error), and other actual errors. They even left comma splices that, I hope, you would note in your students' essays.

Can we let this drop now?

Carol, perfectly aware that no copyeditor or author is perfect and that all of us, including me, make mistakes