That feeling you get when you spot errors in published works.

gothicangel said:

Earlier this year I read two different books, by two different publishers, and they both where littered with errors. Personally I blame the publishers, and felt sorry for the writers as they are both very good at what they do.

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To be fair, if these publishers use conventional editing/preparatory methodology, it is just as much the author's fault since it is that author's responsibilty to carefully check the page proofs for errors before the final editor's line checks. If the publisher doesn't correct errors discovered by the author, then the author is off the hook.

If the books were "littered" with errors, something isn't right in the way those publishers are doing their jobs.

Most errors don't bother me, I can deal with grammar and typos. People are human and eyes cross. The things that gets me, is when the story contradicts itself. She cuts off her hair in chapter three and in chapter five she's brushing her long golden locks.

L.

The errors I usually find don't really bother me. If you can still read the book as easily, it still makes sense and the errors are few and far between, then I'm okay with it. Besides, there isn't a writer who has ever lived who never misses a typo. Still, errors can be a little annoying, no matter how insignificant.

gothicangel said:

Earlier this year I read two different books, by two different publishers, and they both where littered with errors. Personally I blame the publishers, and felt sorry for the writers as they are both very good at what they do.

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I thought the author was the last to error check the book. If this is true, then wouldn't it be the publisher's fault only if they did not implement the author's changes? On the other hand, if the publisher implemented the writer's changes, then wouldn't the end result be on the author?

I would love more insight so I am prepared when I get to the novel-publishing stage.

I'm reading the tomorrow series by John Marsden on ebook at the moment and there are so many horrible errors in it it really throws me out of the book. I'm talking about things like I ji)ked that! Errors that seem so random, so odd, that they don't seem like regular typos. But there are a lot of them and I'm up to book 5 and they've been in all of them and they're driving me nuts!

I notice, but I don't get all pissy about it. Know what? I can't imagine wasting energy on getting upset over such a thing.

What does make me cringe is when people jump on mistakes that aren't mistakes, at all. I've seen people correct grammar in dialogue when it was intentionally written that way because that's the way the character speaks. Yes. Incorrectly. Same thing when the writing is in 1st or close 3rd and the narrator uses bad grammar. That is the way the narrator thinks/speaks, but there is always somebody jumping in to offer their mistaken two-pence.

The funniest error I ever saw in a book was Han Solo written as HAM solo. Hehe. Can see how that one would happen.

Atlantis said:

I'm talking about things like I ji)ked that! Errors that seem so random, so odd, that they don't seem like regular typos.

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Could be scanning artefacts. Correcting scanned text is horrendous. You get used to the mistakes people make, but the mistakes OCR s/ware makes...gah.

I've spotted a couple of those where maybe the editor has assumed it should be 'A' when it actually should be 'B'. Usually happens with weird character names.. i.e 'Tack' would be 'Jack' in one sentence only.

Susan Littlefield said:

I thought the author was the last to error check the book. If this is true, then wouldn't it be the publisher's fault only if they did not implement the author's changes? On the other hand, if the publisher implemented the writer's changes, then wouldn't the end result be on the author?

I would love more insight so I am prepared when I get to the novel-publishing stage.

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You're not obliged to accept changes, but within reason; reasonable people can disagree about the Oxford comma, but not about spelling accommodate with one 'm' or punctuating speech incorrectly. I'd be a bit baffled if an author defended a typo. When you get a structural edit from the book's editor, you can argue and negotiate and collaborate - they'll make suggestions, you'll blow them off and write something quite different but which accomplishes the same thing, and they'll secretly pat themselves on the back for their Machiavellian cunning because it was what they really wanted in the first place, hahaha. But essentially, it's a conversation between two creative people.

Then you'll get a copyedit, and there you're dealing with an editor who is (or is supposed to be) a grammar, style, usage, and continuity ninja. There's a good chance they are better at understanding the prevailing rules for this stuff than you, although, again, reasonable people can disagree. You'll be able to dispute this stuff but you probably won't want to if you have a good copyed. (A good copyed also has the judgement to know when not to encroach on your particular style.) The copyed will fix your spelling and punctuation, too.

At this point the copyedited manuscript goes to be typeset, and it's time to read proofs. At this point, you're not going to want to dispute stuff unless you changed your mind about something since the copyedit, and in practice you probably won't.

The final check is on the author, yes, but the publisher's job is to get them as clean a manuscript as is humanly possible. The author isn't supposed to be the best at proofing or copyediting in the partnership. If a book ends up in print riddled with noticeable errors, it's more the publisher's fault than the author's.

If I send out a book and it comes back from print with an error in it, it smites me to the heart. And yet it does happen to all of us from time to time. I have recently seen some shockers - a cover with a misspelled strapline, a debut novel with repeated paragraphs, and a while back a foreign publisher doing a coedition of one of our books printed, on the book jacket, an author photo which was supposed to be an elderly white-haired man but on closer inspection turned out to be the late Margaret Mahy. Whenever I see them it's most likely because someone rushed, or a system broke down; it's a failure of organization, because clearly not enough pairs of eyes looked at them before they went to print.

Torgo,

If my published book was riddled with errors it would bother me too, so I understand. I also understand there is an entire editing process the book goes through.

The final check is on the author, yes, but the publisher's job is to get them as clean a manuscript as is humanly possible. The author isn't supposed to be the best at proofing or copyediting in the partnership. If a book ends up in print riddled with noticeable errors, it's more the publisher's fault than the author's.

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Well, since the author gets the last view of the novel prior to publication, let's hope they know enough to spot errors. Nobody is perfect, however, and errors are bound to happen.

I used to feel a pride in my ability to catch something. It's like solving a problem. But now what I mostly find are absolutely glaring errors of an entirely wrong word that isn't misspelled. Simple a correctly spelled wrong word that slipped through a spell-checker. For example, "I have conifer that he was alone on the night in question". (Okay, I made that one up. But that's the general idea.) Those I find annoying and for some reason sad. Although I suppose I should find them amusing but I don't.

I don't feel "why should I bother" because I always assumed it wasn't nescessarily the author who wrote it in in the first place. In fact, I always assumed most of the author's errors have been caught but newer errors of late stage transcribing and formatting have slipped in. (Beats the heck out of me though. It's been 15 years since I worked in publishing and even then I never worked in editting.)

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"The author isn't supposed to be the best at proofing or copyediting in the partnership."

I'm all but incapible of proofing my own work. I *know* what it is supposed to say so I simply do not see the errors. (Maybe I'd catch something if it were someone else's error of my work. I don't know. I've never tried.)

I just read through Ender's game and I spotted around 4 or 5 typos that I just had to take pictures of on my iphone.

I'm not sure how the editing process worked with reprints of novels, but some mistakes I just can't believe are missed during the copyediting process.

One instance was ender "getting to his feet" but it said "ender rose to his fee" (no "t")

Another instance was no closed quotations for a few dialogue lines...

It's just ironic how its so easy to capture problems in other peoples work than your own. My beta readers caught errors that were just downright embarrassing on my part lol.

Just goes to show, we're all human! And we all make mistakes!

Atlantis said:

The funniest error I ever saw in a book was Han Solo written as HAM solo. Hehe. Can see how that one would happen.

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Han was quite the Ham though - maybe it was intentional lol

No. Unless it's a really bad book all around, I tend to read as a reader and get sucked into the story and characters so much that I forget about grammar errors. Except typos. I circle typos. Then move on.

More than once, I have given up on a book because there were so many misspellings. I have seen a character's name spelled 2 or 3 different ways. Fun fiction!

If you're the writer, you should hold yourself responsible for any errors that slip in. The book goes out with your name on it, and you have no excuses, no one else to blame. You can say it's the editor's fault all day long, but the book still has your name on it, and will still have errors in it, unless you take responsibility.

But if you read a novel and find no errors at all, you probably just didn't see them. Hand someone else the novel, and they'll probably find errors you missed.

I once read a book called Atlanta Nights, written by Travis Tea. It was filled with errors of all sorts and I can't understand why, since it was put out by that large publisher, Publish America.

writerjohnb said:

I once read a book called Atlanta Nights, written by Travis Tea. It was filled with errors of all sorts and I can't understand why, since it was put out by that large publisher, Publish America.

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I know, right? They usually have such good books, too. It was a little disappointing....

It bugs me when I see errors in the nth edition that were in editions 1 through n-1.

Errors in not-new e-books bug me because fixing them once caught is a simple matter of an upload.

The worse I've seen lately was an edition of Austen's Persuasion, in which the name "Louisa" was misspelled "Lousia" EVERY OTHER TIME IT APPEARED. Seriously. Dozens of "Lousias." The book was you-know-what with them. Sacrilege!

In general, however, I get much more annoyed by continuity failures, wobbly plots and what I consider substandard prose style than I get about the occasional typo or grammar glitch.

Except for "it's" used for "its." That makes me froth at the mouth.

Jamesaritchie said:

If you're the writer, you should hold yourself responsible for any errors that slip in. The book goes out with your name on it, and you have no excuses, no one else to blame. You can say it's the editor's fault all day long, but the book still has your name on it, and will still have errors in it, unless you take responsibility.

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This is how I feel. Anything with my name is my responsibility.

But if you read a novel and find no errors at all, you probably just didn't see them. Hand someone else the novel, and they'll probably find errors you missed.

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I think many people believe that a novel has to be perfect to be published, but there is no way this can happen. Everybody involved is human and imperfect. I think the real issue is that we often overlook the errors, especially if the story is good.