[ shoht ]SHOW IPA
noun
- Also shote . a young, weaned pig.
- Geep.
Versus:
stoat
[ stoht ]SHOW IPA
noun
- the ermine, Mustela erminea, especially when in brown summer pelage.
Why am I showing you this, you ask? Good question, I’m happy to answer that for you. As
always, it’s a bit of a story…
My beautiful Aunt bought all of my books, even though she could not see to read them. So, I
have been (clumsily) recording them, (old school on cassette tapes) and sending them to her so
she can enjoy them.
In my third book, “How to Miss-Spell Fairy” there is a character that is a pre to early pubescent,
uhm, pig. I researched for some time for a proper word that describes a pig that is, basically a
tweenager in its development; a word that, if you read it and said to yourself, what is that? And if
you chose to look it up, as I often do while reading, and find a word I’m not familiar with, you
would find the definition and say, oh, okay and continue enjoying the story with your new word
tucked nicely in your brain.
Aaaanyway, jump back to a few weeks ago, I was reading book 1 of “The Changelings Series”
by Christina Soontornvat (great series, I recommend) where one of the characters can change
into a stoat. As I was reading, that word and in the convoluted way that my brain works, I had a
‘well, shit’ moment. I saw in my mind, within the pages of “How to Miss-Spell Fairy”, the word
stoat typed and printed, time and time again.
Yep. As I was reading the story for my Aunt today, there it was, STOAT! Not SHOAT!
How many times did I read that story in the editing process!? How many times did my editors
read that story??
Funny how our brains work. It wants to make sense of things, and stoat is a real word. It is a
real thing. So is shoat.
So, nothing to do about it now, except the fact that people will be reading my story and thinking,
‘Sheesh, she didn’t even know the difference between a shoat and a stoat’.
Let this be evidence that yes, yes I do.
In the meantime, if you are reading my story, thank you so much and I don’t think it would be too
hard to just take a sharp pencil and change the t in stoat to an h for shoat…just saying.
Thank you to all my readers for ignoring all the editing issues in all three of my books and
seeing the stories.
Imperfectly yours,
Pahhy Patty
