Dangerously e-books: How do I know if my ebooks have been altered?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by meeera

Hear hear to all that. Hell, my kid knew that "gay" in old books didn't mean homosexual by the time he was about seven. 'Cos we read Enid Blyton, and I explained it. It's really not that hard.

In fact, in the current (11th) edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, the first three definitions of the adjective "gay" have nothing to do with homosexuality:

1 a : happily excited : MERRY *in a gay mood* b : keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits *a bird's gay spring song*
2 a : BRIGHT, LIVELY *gay sunny meadows* b : brilliant in color
3 : given to social pleasures; also : LICENTIOUS
4 a : HOMOSEXUAL *gay men* b : of, relating to, or used by homosexuals *the gay rights movement* *a gay bar*
synonyms see LIVELY

[Ebookfans]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'd just get some sleeping pills.

Lmao same.

Just use good judgement, maybe background check your resource where ever you have been attaining these ebooks.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Catlady

In fact, in the current (11th) edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, the first three definitions of the adjective "gay" have nothing to do with homosexuality:

There's also the idea that a word which appears to be familiar will not be investigated by the same readers who would use a dictionary to look up an unfamiliar word.

Editors should understand that anticipated laziness should not be seen an obstacle. Unfamiliar usage = unfamiliar word. Dictionaries are sites of discovery, not bothersome tomes to be opened reluctantly.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Another question I might ask is why the word gay should be treated as offensive at all. It's currently considered to be the most accepted and least insulting term for homosexual. What's the problem?

I don't think anyone's suggested that it's offensive; merely that it may be misunderstood (although personally I think that the overwhelming majority of readers will be aware of the "original" meaning of the word, and are unlikely to misunderstand it).

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't think anyone's suggested that it's offensive; merely that it may be misunderstood (although personally I think that the overwhelming majority of readers will be aware of the "original" meaning of the word, and are unlikely to misunderstand it).

You happened to comment on my post just before I removed that part of it for those very reasons.

That point was different from (and less relevant than) the one about undermining the significance of a work by changing supposedly questionable language.

[Namekuseijin]

welcome to the disinformation age

and help fund our wiki

[Namekuseijin]

BTW, here's a marvelous quote from The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster:

Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what I think you think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free from taint of personality, which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.

very good novellete BTW

can we ever get to the original sources of anything at all? how would we know it, when the original sources are lost in the sands of time and all we have is accounts of it from others?

cultural heritage is a series os mismatches on misquotations

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can you give a specific example, please?

Unless you are willing to post a cash bond of at least us$25,000,000 for the legal defence of MobileReads, me, you, and anybody else that participates in this thread, I won't name names here.

[DiapDealer]

I smell a dodge.

[peachiekene]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

I don't doubt that there are both very young native speakers and non-native speakers who aren't familiar with the changes in certain words' meanings over time, but frankly, I'd expect anyone who shows active interest in downloading and reading 19th century works (especially such which aren't likely to be part of any compulsory reading list in schools) to have some considerable experience with, well, reading books, and with the concept of older vocabulary existing as well as words changing in meaning.

Besides, when I come across with a word that I am either unfamiliar with or that seems odd in context (in the meaning that I know), there are such things as dictionaries.

In general, I'm not opposed to very minor updating (when noted as such in the preface) - specifically in spelling, either for internal consistency in the text or for consistency with modern usage (in particular such cases that might be mistaken for typos otherwise, e.g. freind -> friend); to-day -> today would also not bother me but at the same time I'm familiar with to-day and find it pleasantly quaint, part of the overall feeling and atmosphere of reading an older book.

Actual vocabulary changes though... I'd really prefer it if that didn't happen. I suppose I see why they happen in children's books modernised for today's sensibilities, but in older works more likely to be read by people over ten years old, definitely not. Footnotes (leaving the original word and adding a footnote explaining its usage or giving a modern equivalent) are a much better way to go about any obsolete or potentially confusing words, IMHO.

(I started reading 19th century English literature - printed, not particularly modernised editions - when I was about 17-18, as a non-native speaker. This was before the era of Internet and before using English actively in my daily life. Yeah, it was a bit of a struggle for the first few months, but dictionaries exist and it gets easier the more you read.)

This. I don't mind modern spellings simply because I know for me --- some things would suck me out of reading. To-day would be fine, but freind would need a footnote or something at the beginning of the book stating "these words look misspelled, but aren't" or something.

[EbookNovice]

Alright, I'm going to get back to replying the others in this thread. Before I do that, I just noticed that on Amazon it's possible to get a preview of e-books. Does anyone know of a fast way for me to compare the preview version with my real version of the same book on my hard drive?

Thanks!

[HarryT]

What do you mean by "the real version of the same book on my hard drive"?

[dandelioncottage]

I was just looking at the book Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson on the B&N site. The Nook version has the caveat "This digital version does not exactly match the physical book displayed here."

I'm assuming they mean the cover art, and not the text, but I've never seen this warning before.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I know little about the production of ebooks within commercial publishing houses, but here's a guess:

The disclaimer might apply to styles of design, typography and ornament (or other details of production) deemed not profitable to take the time to reproduce, but it might also be an attempt to excuse the occasional typo or missed homonym that escapes detection in a scan. We've all found them in commercial ebooks from texts that didn't have the same issues initially.

Books that are published today can easily be recreated in electronic editions, since they were probably modern electronic texts to begin with. But since Housekeeping appears to have been published in 1980, the e-book was probably scanned, don't you think?

I've been trying to get a university publisher to allow me to use my own epub designer for a book, but they seem partial to their own. Once that obstacle's surmounted, I'll let you know how it's done.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by EbookNovice

Alright, I'm going to get back to replying the others in this thread. Before I do that, I just noticed that on Amazon it's possible to get a preview of e-books. Does anyone know of a fast way for me to compare the preview version with my real version of the same book on my hard drive?

Thanks!

If you're really concerned about whether the book has been altered, I suppose you could take the sample, convert it to text and do a text compare against the file you had. But which are you using as the standard of comparison? Are you verifying your copy against Amazon's sample, or are you verifying Amazon's sample against your file? The latter implies that you already trust your files, so why bother to check them? And the former implies that you trust Amazon, so if the accuracy of the books are important, buy from Amazon (Or B&N, Kobo, etc.).

If you're really concerned, buy the books in paper and scan them yourself. It's really not very likely that books you obtain from a legitimate source are going to contain malicious edits, it would probably be discovered fairly quickly. If enough people were really concerned, I suppose the Library of Congress would be used as a gold standard for comparison.