Readers: Our last column mentioned goofs of geography. Today we tackle history, Eliot’s favorite subject and one that’s regularly used incorrectly in writing.

In our previous segment, Eliot mentioned giving up on bad audiobooks after they made a glaring goof. In one of those, the protagonist was a law student who was asked one day by his teacher about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1918. Wrong! That’s the year the war ended. The archduke was shot in 1914. With the availability of the internet, an author’s failure to take the time to double-check such basic facts is a grievous sin. And a disqualifier.

As Eliot toiled on his Civil War novel, Peace River, he fretted constantly about mistakes he inadvertently might be inserting. Historical fiction is a real minefield, and in no arena is this more profound than the Civil War. America is rife with Civil War “nerds” who gleefully will point out to a writer that a soldier’s sleeve should have had two stripes, not three. That that model of rifle hadn’t yet been created. Or that those tracks would have been on the other side of the river. 

Sometimes, you are a victim of the Rumsfeld Rule. That’s former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq War-era edict that “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Once, Eliot was in a writer’s group when a member gave him the bad news that he’d identified a character as Czechoslovakian, when that nation didn’t exist in the 1860s. Yikes! 

Also: A note about Wikipedia. If you want to use it as a primary source, that’s your call. Newspapers don’t. The Horribly Wrong team won’t. It’s not that Wikipedia lies. It’s just that it’s an encyclopedia by committee, and prone to honest mistakes. What you can do is go to the bottom of the entry where it lists sources and go to those sources yourself. If you want to compare your local college’s student population to that of the University of Michigan, do yourself a favor. Just go to the webpage of the University of Michigan.

One final anecdote: Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras, was sentenced to death in 1790 after being accused of trying to rescue the royal family during the French Revolution. Upon reading his death warrant, Favras’ only remark was, “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/HzAwRcjI53w

Next time: Bad Anatomy

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!