To be honest: I'm so tired of it

[forcheville]

Once you develop the eye for typos you start to find them everywhere. I'm reading a hardback at the moment, published in the 1970s, quality edition, and am amazed at the number of errors in the text, usually missing letters that turn one word into another, "I" where it should have been "It", "ashes" where it should have been "lashes", etc.
Of course a pbook is very easy to fix, you just need a pencil.

[MickiTee]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Why?? Spelling, punctuation, and grammar are just presentation....the idea of the story is still there! granted...that's just spelling...but a GREAT story lives inside there...

Spelling, punctuation & grammar do matter.

The problems seem to be with author's back catalogues, as opposed to current books, which are OCR'd and then not proof read by the publishers. I've got many examples of books where 'the' has be rendered as 'he', 'rn' as 'm' etc. etc.

The worst example of this I've come across is Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic. Its obviously been OCR'd and NOT proofread as there is a consistent error all through Part 3 of the book where the word 'cornet' has been rendered as 'comet'. Unless you know the story you wouldn't know what was happening especially as what happens here is crucial to the plot. I've attached a small sample of the text to illustrate this.

Publishers wouldn't produce a hardback or paperback edition with this lack of quality, so why can't they take the same care with ebooks?

[cfrizz]

Because they never wanted ebooks to come into being in the first place, since it interferes with the hard cover sales.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Because they never wanted ebooks to come into being in the first place, since it interferes with the hard cover sales.

That's not true. Back when eBooks were not nearly as popular there wasn't this issue of eBooks cannibalizing hardcover releases. It was because Amazon was discounting best sellers down to $9.99 that the BPHs started the eBook hurting hardcover sales nonsense.

[vxf]

I agree with the OP 100%.
I actually posted a similar rant not long ago.
Yes, the quality is terrible. It's not just ebooks - magazines and newspapers have huge problems. I noticed that the Kindle, Sony, and iPad versions of the WSJ and Financial Times all have many typos and formatting problems not present in print.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by MickiTee

Publishers wouldn't produce a hardback or paperback edition with this lack of quality, so why can't they take the same care with ebooks?

Actually, in at least some cases, they do produce paperbacks with the same lack of quality. I emailed Voyager to complain about errors I'd found in the Temeraire series of books, and they sent me a full set of paperbacks. I had a look in the Victory of Eagles paperback, and found the same errors as in the ebook. See the attached photos for three examples.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MickiTee

Spelling, punctuation & grammar do matter.

The problems seem to be with author's back catalogues, as opposed to current books, which are OCR'd and then not proof read by the publishers. I've got many examples of books where 'the' has be rendered as 'he', 'rn' as 'm' etc. etc.

The worst example of this I've come across is Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic. Its obviously been OCR'd and NOT proofread as there is a consistent error all through Part 3 of the book where the word 'cornet' has been rendered as 'comet'. Unless you know the story you wouldn't know what was happening especially as what happens here is crucial to the plot. I've attached a small sample of the text to illustrate this.

Publishers wouldn't produce a hardback or paperback edition with this lack of quality, so why can't they take the same care with ebooks?

"r n" -> "m" is an extremely common OCR error, and one which is tough to spot even when a book is proofed. Don't be too hard on them for that one.

[GeoffC]

For anyone to say that 'spelling, punctuation and grammar' are unimportant worries little old me!

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"r n" -> "m" is an extremely common OCR error, and one which is tough to spot even when a book is proofed. Don't be too hard on them for that one.

True, but I'd guess a simple spellcheck would find most of them. Would there be many occasions where mutating 'rn' into 'm' would give two existing words?

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

True, but I'd guess a simple spellcheck would find most of them. Would there be many occasions where mutating 'rn' into 'm' would give two existing words?

darn - dam
barn - bam
turn - tum
corn - com
morn - mom
stern - stem
garner - gamer

That's about two minutes thought worth - there's almost certainly dozens, if not hundreds, more.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

True, but I'd guess a simple spellcheck would find most of them. Would there be many occasions where mutating 'rn' into 'm' would give two existing words?

using spellcheck wouldn't solve many of the OCR issues.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

darn - dam
barn - bam
turn - tum
corn - com
morn - mom
stern - stem
garner - gamer

That's about two minutes thought worth - there's almost certainly dozens more.

OK, that'll teach me to write before thinking . You're right, there are lots of them.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

OK, that'll teach me to write before thinking . You're right, there are lots of them.

chortles

one word could alter the whole meaning of a sentence and even a story !

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

darn - dam
barn - bam
turn - tum
corn - com
morn - mom
stern - stem
garner - gamer

That's about two minutes thought worth - there's almost certainly dozens, if not hundreds, more.

Yes, that's the problem. It's a VERY common letter combination for valid words, hence a spell check doesn't really help.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

For anyone to say that 'spelling, punctuation and grammar' are unimportant worries little old me!

Just for clarification - they DO matter. I was simply making the point (hopefully) that the story is NOT all there is to a book. Presentation is a large portion of the experience. Without a good story, presentation is nothing; Bad presentation can ruin/detract from a good story.

who cares for covers, fonts or paragraph indentation?
Presentation is a huge part of the package. If we carried your question further...
Who cares about spelling, punctuation, grammar...

I wonder if a book written in nothing but text talk, with no spaces, paragraph indents, scene changes, chapters..."all in Edwardian Script Font"... wrapped with a picture of a pile of dog poo...would sell very well??

A perfect example would be 5-star restaurants...they charge an arm & a leg for a little bit of whipped cream sprinkled with powder and a stylish sauce in a swirl...the same cream would be an afterthought, and possibly even put you off your meal, if it was served in a dirty plastic bowl.