Anachronism

In practice

An anachronism is something placed in a time where it does not belong: a wristwatch in ancient Rome, modern slang in a Victorian drawing room, a character in 1850 talking about germs as if everyone knew. The word comes from Greek roots meaning "against time." Most anachronisms point backward in time, putting a later invention or idea into an earlier period, but the term also covers a person or custom that survives past its era.

For writers, anachronism comes in two kinds. The accidental kind is an error of research that pulls an attentive reader or viewer out of the story, and period films are famous for them. The deliberate kind is a choice: A Knight's Tale has medieval crowds stomping to Queen's "We Will Rock You," and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette slips a pair of Converse sneakers into Versailles, both to make an old world feel as alive as the present.

The common mistake is policing objects and missing language and attitudes. Most readers will never notice the wrong kind of button. Many more notice a historical character who speaks like a modern therapist, holds the values of a twenty-first-century reader without explanation, or says "okay." Those are anachronisms of mind and speech, and they do more damage than a misplaced prop.

An anachronism used on purpose

The sneakers are deliberately wrong for 1775, and the scene wants the audience to notice. They say in one image what the queen will not say aloud: she is a teenager trapped in a costume. A deliberate anachronism works when it is clearly a choice, used sparingly, and tied to what a character feels. Scattered at random, the same device just looks like a research mistake.

What an anachronism is

An anachronism is an error or inconsistency in chronology: a person, thing, event, word or custom placed in a period where it could not have existed, or kept alive in a period that has moved past it. Merriam-Webster defines it as an error in chronology, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects or customs in regard to each other. The adjective is anachronistic.

The most common kind is the prochronism, where something appears before it was invented, such as a telescope in a story set before 1600. The rarer parachronism is the reverse: something appears long after its time, like a character still using a technology everyone else abandoned. In everyday speech, people also call a person or institution an anachronism when it seems to belong to the past.

Anachronism is not the same as a continuity error. A continuity error is a mismatch inside the story, such as a glass that is full in one shot and empty in the next. An anachronism is a mismatch between the story and history. A coffee cup left on a set is a production mistake; it becomes an anachronism only if the story is set in a world where that cup could not exist.

Examples of anachronism

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has one of the best-known literary anachronisms: in ancient Rome, a clock strikes three, centuries before mechanical striking clocks existed. Shakespeare also gives Cleopatra a game of billiards. Audiences of his day did not mind, and these slips are now studied as examples of how Elizabethan writers saw the past through their present.

Films produce many accidental examples. Braveheart is often cited for dressing thirteenth-century Scots in belted plaids, a garment recorded centuries later. Wristwatches, airplane contrails, modern traffic signs and plastic water bottles have all been spotted in period productions. Fans collect them online, which is why careful productions hire historical consultants.

Deliberate anachronism has a long history too. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet keeps Shakespeare's verse but sets it among guns and cars. Hamilton tells the founding of the United States in hip-hop and has its founders played by actors of color. Monty Python and the Holy Grail ends its medieval quest with modern police arriving to arrest the knights. In each case the clash with history is the point.

Anachronism in language and ideas

Words have birthdays, and a word used before it existed is an anachronism. "Okay" dates from the late 1830s, and phrases like "reach out" in the business sense, "closure" in the emotional sense and "process your feelings" are modern. A period novel can be accurate in every object and still feel wrong because its characters talk like the author's friends.

Ideas and values can be anachronistic too. A character in a historical setting who takes for granted modern ideas about medicine, psychology or social equality, with no one around them reacting, can feel like a visitor from the present. That does not mean historical characters cannot hold unusual views; it means the story should show what holding them cost in their world.

Writers of historical fiction usually aim for a feeling of period rather than a strict reconstruction. Fully accurate dialogue from 1600 would be hard for most readers to follow, so most writers use modern grammar with period-appropriate vocabulary, avoid words that call attention to their newness, and let a few chosen period terms carry the texture.

How to catch or use anachronism

To catch accidental anachronisms, check the first-use dates of suspicious words in a historical dictionary such as Merriam-Webster's, which gives a first known use for each entry, and research the history of every object a character handles: lighting, money, transportation, medicine, communication and clothing. Ask a reader who knows the period to read the draft looking only for errors.

For screenplays, be careful in the action lines about anything the production will have to show. If the script calls for "a lighter," a story set before the nineteenth century needs a different way to make fire. The script is the first place the production design team looks, and an anachronism written there will cost money to fix later or end up on screen.

To use anachronism on purpose, make it unmistakable and give it a job. A single strong anachronism (a modern song, a contemporary phrase) can connect the past to the audience's present, mark a character as out of step with their world, or set a comic tone. Keep everything around it accurate, so the audience reads the anachronism as a decision and not a slip.