I've heard Jason Mraz's I'm Yours a lot. Heard it some number of times approaching infinity, in fact, but this week was the first time I noticed that one of the lines doesn't make any sense: "And it's our God-forsaken right to be loved..."
I think the reason that I didn't notice "God-forsaken" was the wrong word was that I knew what Mraz meant to convey ("God-given"). The mistake hasn't hurt the song's popularity any, but he might wish that someone had noticed ahead of time so he could have fixed it.
Which brings me to what I really wanted to say: Editors are terrific. I am so happy that, in addition to the professional editors who read over my drafts, my family and friends are willing to help me out. I appreciate their comments greatly! They help me with my books, articles, and poems, but everybody needs another set of eyes to go over what they've written sometimes. For instance, signs, flyers, trophies, birthday cakes, tattoos. You don't want those to be misspelled.
If you'd like to boost your own editing skills (or laugh at someone else's lack of them), there are a lot of interesting sites/blogs you might like to check out:
* A helpful overview of editing and proofreading from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
* 10 Words You Need To Stop Misspelling from Oatmeal, plus more grammar posts
* Everything You Need To Know About Grammar from The Truth About Grammar
* A previous post about the Daily Writing Tip
* The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
* Apostrophe Catastrophes
I really like I'm Yours, too, and I just re-listened to it to find the line in question.
ReplyDeleteAnd I discovered an interesting thing. Mr. Mraz actually says "God-intended" in the song (at least the version I have).
Yet when I looked at half a dozen links to the lyrics of the song, they all say "God-forsaken."
So, is there a version out there where he says "God-forsaken" (which makes no sense) or has someone written the wrong phrase on sheet music or a lyric web page and it has been duplicated all over the place.
Guess where I'd place my bet. :-)
Okay, my version has "God-intended" but I just listened to three YouTube videos and they *all* have "God-forsaken" in them.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. One version with an acceptable phrase and a bunch with the ridiculous phrase.
Have no idea what's going on. But it looks like I'd lose my bet. :-(
Glad I got the version I have. (Having the other would drive me...a retired editor...nuts.)
And, by the way, I didn't mean to be "anonymous" in my last post. Just hit the Publish button too quickly.