Worst thing in a novel...

[Mark Lazer]

What I find worse than a lousy story (well, almost) is typos in a novel. I'm reading Sara Gran's Dope now, and found two already, and I'm only in chapter 4! I hate that.

Am I a nut, or do more people have this?

[Carrie in PA]

You're not alone. It drives me absolutely insane!

[BruceJ]

Do you fault the author more or the publisher more for that, just out of curiosity?

I read Hunt for Red October way back when the first release was through the Navy's press at Anapolis. It was really bad for typos. You don't see many in Clancey's works now, though, so has he gotten better or is the editing process better?

The most recent one I saw was kind of funny. It had a private corporate/government jet going Mach 8.5. I think they meant Mach .85. You?

[Mark Lazer]

Oh, I wanted to add that!

A writer missing a letter, okay, but come on, where's an editor for?

[MHanlon]

I think what's worse than typos is when an author or editor tries to act like he/she meant to do it on purpose.

[Judg]

You are definitely not alone. But even worse are grammatical mistakes which are - fortunately - rarer. "The boat sunk beneath the waves..." that kind of thing.

I managed to train myself not to rant at all the poor English one sees on the Internet. But I must confess, when I see writers making posts riddled with abused apostrophes and mangled spelling, it makes me want to cry. Is it that hard to acquire the basic tools of the trade? I suppose they must be exceptionally fine storytellers. Or unpublished.

[blacbird]

Worse for me than typos (which are bad enough) are errors of plain fact and continuity. Some years back I read a classic novel (I believe it was one of Conan Doyle's, but I could at this point be mistaken about that), which mentioned the American migration westward to the growing metropolis of Seattle, Kentucky. In other threads I've mentioned a recent book by Tony Hillerman that drove me crazy by misspelling consistently (at least he's consistent) the name of a major 20th Century historical figure, which has a city named after him, available for lookup on any world map. And, additionally, errors in dialog attribution. Gaaaaaah!

caw

[janetbellinger]

Anything overwritten. I like to be allowed to exercise my admittedly feeble imagination.

[farfromfearless]

I read mostly fantasy with the occasional foray into other fiction genres, so for me the things I hate in such novels are shallow characters. Characters that to me feel like photocopies of classic characters, i.e. the white-bearded, wizened old wizard name "Fladnag" the white - c'mon LOL! Stories and plots that are too timid to explore their themes in depth - and worst of all: cop-out endings.

[IrishScribbler]

A friend and colleague of mine got so frustrated with typos in a book, she corrected them and sent the book to the publishing house.

It drives me batty, as well.

[LunarMoon]

While typos can be a bit of an annoyance if seen excessively I’m typically fine with them not only due to the fact that few of them impair my understanding of the story but in most circumstances my eyes probably skip over them since my mind basically has an internal spell check which replaces any small error with the correct version of the word stored in my memory. However, even more irritating than the actual story and plot is a bad writing style. Even the best plots can be torn to pieces if the boring prose can’t keep my interest and there’s no greater shame than when a wonderful plot that could’ve been something is undermined by poor execution and writing.

[Shadow_Ferret]

a peanut butter and jelly sandwich... at that point you might as well just throw the book away.

[Begbie]

Stilted language

[Tallymark]

Name switches. Several times in books I'll be in a middle of a scene, and suddenly a sentence will make absolutely no sense, and you have to pull yourself out of the scene for a minute to figure out what's really going on--and that the problem is that the author put the name of the wrong character down. And it's usually fairly obvious, too--I mean, I've seen it where the name of a male character is put down instead of the name of the female character, and the sentence still has all the female pronouns. "Bob went to the store, then she went to the movies." It makes you wonder if they reread the book at all after finishing--the eye sometimes skims over typos, but c'mon, you ought to be able to keep your own characters straight.

[victoriastrauss]

Do you fault the author more or the publisher more for that, just out of curiosity?Why would you fault the author? These kinds of mistakes (and sometimes bigger ones, such as transposed sentences or even missing paragraphs) creep in during the typesetting process. The author gets the page proofs to read over for errors, but she's not a professional proofreader and by that time she's read the damn thing 100 times, and it's tough to spot mistakes when you're reading something you practically know by heart.

The author's are not the final set of eyes. Once the author returns the proofs, a proofreader is supposed to do a final read-through--a very last chance to catch typos and other errors. If errors survive, and you feel compelled to blame someone, blame the proofreader.

- Victoria

[BardSkye]

I had one memorable week about ten years ago when I bought two books and two cassette tapes. Neither tape had the artist it was supposed to on it. Of the books, Book 1 had a half-dozen pages transposed from chapter 4 into chapter 10, and Book 2 was missing an entire chapter.

[icerose]

I don't fault anyone because it gives me hope that my imperfect prose might have a chance in the reader world.

[PeeDee]

I managed to train myself not to rant at all the poor English one sees on the Internet. But I must confess, when I see writers making posts riddled with abused apostrophes and mangled spelling, it makes me want to cry. Is it that hard to acquire the basic tools of the trade? I suppose they must be exceptionally fine storytellers. Or unpublished.

Bad english don't bother me none on the internet. I reckon it'sa just part of der internet community, what is more casuel 'n' has people just typing things an' not prooffing them first,

Doesnt bother me.

The occasional typo in a book doesn't bother me either. I figure it was just a glitch somewhere along the way. Not anyone's fault. you can have fifteen pairs of eyes look at a book, but all fifteen pairs of eyes belong to human beings, who occasionally miss things. Nothing to be done.

[Scarlett_156]

Why care about typos? Can't you just read the story and judge it for its ideas?? (blagh she can't believe she is typing these words)

[kristie911]

Name switches. Several times in books I'll be in a middle of a scene, and suddenly a sentence will make absolutely no sense, and you have to pull yourself out of the scene for a minute to figure out what's really going on

Even worse is when the name is totally wrong. I was reading a book and the MC was Sarah, suddenly the author refers to her as Maggie. Just one time...it was terribly confusing until you realize what happened. I'm looking at it and thinking, "Who the freakin' hell is Maggie? There's no Maggie in this book!"

[TrickyFiction]

A few typos don't bother me much.

[badducky]

You know what bothers me the most in a novel...

When I haven't finished writing it but I can't get it out of my head if I don't and it's just lingering there like a metal wedge in the back of my head...

Man, I have got to pull that sucker out.

[Julie Worth]

I had one memorable week about ten years ago when I bought two books and two cassette tapes...Book 1 had a half-dozen pages transposed from chapter 4 into chapter 10, and Book 2 was missing an entire chapter.

See, this is just the cut and paste technique, whereby literary works are created from nothing but crap. I'm going to take one of my books and turn it into literary genius that way. (The result of no shame, combined with desperation.)

[PeeDee]

See, this is just the cut and paste technique, whereby literary works are created from nothing but crap. I'm going to take one of my books and turn it into literary genius that way. (The result of no shame, combined with desperation.)

And if you say that your characters are stuck in a time loop, then you can get away scott-free!

[Julie Worth]

And if you say that your characters are stuck in a time loop, then you can get away scott-free!

Wonderful, as you now look like a fortuneteller!

[PeeDee]

This is why I will retire rich to my private tropical island, of course.

[farfromfearless]

I had one memorable week about ten years ago when I bought two books and two cassette tapes. Neither tape had the artist it was supposed to on it. Of the books, Book 1 had a half-dozen pages transposed from chapter 4 into chapter 10, and Book 2 was missing an entire chapter.

I was finishing on installment of Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series and the LAST chapter - yeah, that's right - the last chapter of the book was missing. I went to my local Chapters Bookstore to check out other copies of the book, and sure enough they too were missing the last chapter. It took me six months find a copy that was complete. And I didn't even like the damn book!

[Dave.C.Robinson]

The one that drove me nuts was Payne Harrison's "Storming Intrepid." For some reason the word flight was spelled "flite" throughout the novel. It was a space/aviation technothriller so that word came up a lot. It annoyed me enough that I've never read another book of his.