Typos: Who Cares?

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It's all about the frequency for me. Pretty-much every book ever printed has had typos. A few here or there don't bother me at all. Neither should they bother a reviewer.

Agreed except it depends. I expect some typos but if they alter the meaning or draw the reader to the wrong conclusion, then even one is one too many. If someone writes "If you add to balls to the existing rack of five balls", the error is annoying but not fatal and not noteworthy. But if you write "If you add to balls to the existing rack of five balls so that there are eight balls in the rack", the errors are noteworthy and fatal. And if the errors are compounded, as in "If you add to balls to the existing rack of five balls so that there are ate balls in the rack", the signal I get is that this is a book that should be discarded and the author put on my blacklist.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

I've just proofread a book which had about four dozen typos in 720 pages. I think that's a bit more than average, but not unusual, and not a problem at all.

If you are talking solely about quantity, I'd agree. But the question of quality remains (ie, are these errors that can mislead or cause the reader to draw the wrong conclusion?). It matters greatly what the subject matter is: for example, in a novel, on pages 5, 7, 30, and 55 the heroine had bright blue eyes but on pages 22, 61, and 66 her eyes were a pale green vs. in a medical treatise the dosage on pages 5, 7, 30, and 55 was 25 mg but on page 66 it was 25 g. The color of the eyes is likely not to be significant in terms of plot (unless, of course, that is what distinguishes one twin sister from the other) whereas giving the wrong dosage can be lethal or can make the drug ineffective (25 mg vs 25 g), making the typo, even if it occurs just once, significant.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by rkomar

It can be hard for writers to correct their own typos. Unless you can distance yourself from the work, you often "read" what you meant to say rather than what you actually said. It helps to set the work aside and forget what you meant to say before proofing it.

Originally Posted by rkomar

Editors don't have that problem.

Not quite right. Editors also tend to read what they expect to read. An excellent editor will catch most -- but not all -- TYPO errors. Where the problem mostly arises with professional editors is when something comes down to a matter of style or opinion.

I think most professional editors would catch and correct "to balls added to three balls". But what about "copyeditor", "copy-editor", and "copy editor"? All three spellings are currently accepted as correct. The question in that instance is not "is the spelling correct?" or "is it a typo?", but "is the spelling consistent throughout the manuscript?"

Need to be careful that TYPO is not confused with INCONSISTENT.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Yes, I've copy-edited and proofread books. Yes, little mistakes can be easy to miss, which is why publishers hire people to be copy editors and proofreaders. Yes, spell-check misses wrong words that are spelled correctly, which is why publishers hire people to be copy editors and proofreaders.

(Bolding supplied by me.)

The above quote is a good illustration of my previous comment regarding typo vs. consistency. If "copy-edited" is correct, then shouldn't it be "copy-editor"? Or, if "copy editor" is correct, shouldn't it be "copy edited"? Or should they be "copyedited" and copyeditor"? Or if both "copy-edited" and "copy editor" are correct, is there an inconsistency? If there is no inconsistency, how can use of the two different forms be reconciled?

Regardless of the decision that the editor makes in answering the above questions, the professional editor will be able to justify his/her decision and the justification will be understandable to editorial colleagues.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by rhadin

(Bolding supplied by me.)

The above quote is a good illustration of my previous comment regarding typo vs. consistency. If "copy-edited" is correct, then shouldn't it be "copy-editor"? Or, if "copy editor" is correct, shouldn't it be "copy edited"? Or should they be "copyedited" and copyeditor"? Or if both "copy-edited" and "copy editor" are correct, is there an inconsistency? If there is no inconsistency, how can use of the two different forms be reconciled?

Regardless of the decision that the editor makes in answering the above questions, the professional editor will be able to justify his/her decision and the justification will be understandable to editorial colleagues.

I hyphenated copy-edited because it's a verb. I did not hyphenate copy editor because it's a noun. So that's the distinction and the justification. Some dictionaries list the terms as copyedit, copy editor--again, making a distinction.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by rhadin

If you are talking solely about quantity, I'd agree. But the question of quality remains (ie, are these errors that can mislead or cause the reader to draw the wrong conclusion?). It matters greatly what the subject matter is: for example, in a novel, on pages 5, 7, 30, and 55 the heroine had bright blue eyes but on pages 22, 61, and 66 her eyes were a pale green vs. in a medical treatise the dosage on pages 5, 7, 30, and 55 was 25 mg but on page 66 it was 25 g. The color of the eyes is likely not to be significant in terms of plot (unless, of course, that is what distinguishes one twin sister from the other) whereas giving the wrong dosage can be lethal or can make the drug ineffective (25 mg vs 25 g), making the typo, even if it occurs just once, significant.

You are right about some kind of typos being problematic; the book I was referring to only had the harmless kind -- the sort where you can clearly see that the typesetter had slipped and don't get confused at all.

[Pulpmeister]

I am currently preparing an story from Weird Tales, very early issues (Vol 2 No 1 and 2) , and the typos in the magazine are truly astounding. n for u is routine; l for i, or even !; o, e a and c all confused. This is not the blurring of the scan of the magazine, but just plain old fashioned bad typesetting. I can only conclude that Weird Tales' budget was so tiny at the time that they couldn't afford to proofread, nor to reset dud lines. About one in 3 lines have a typo. I've never seen anything like it in print.

Try this typical paragraph:

John B. was the last captive to be released. The nnmher of her vietims eomplete, the girl gestured toward one of the open lanes.

[Jack Torrance]

Just based on my user name, I'm a King fan. I'm sure he has more than one person proof his books, yet I've found an error in every single one and I'm not one to look for them so they are glaring enough that I notice them. You would think that audiobooks would be free of them but thats not even the case as I've pcked up errors in them as well.

Its not just King. I can't recall a book that hasn't had one.

Ebooks have to be the worst though. Since some of them come from "questionable' sources I'll find spelling errors riddled throughout but mostly its formatting errors. They have to be in really bad shape to stop me from reading the book as normally I can just roll right over it.

I have had a few where it's so bad that it goes beyond just annoying, to difficult to read and I've stopped reading, but for the most part I wont play the "Grammar Nazi" and try to just enjoy the story.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

Try this typical paragraph:

John B. was the last captive to be released. The nnmher of her vietims eomplete, the girl gestured toward one of the open lanes.

On a small screen with a small font, my eyes slid right over this sentence with ease. My brain seemed willing to subconsciously "autocorrect" it for me. On a larger screen, however, the errors are quite distracting to me.

Classic case in point:

"It deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

I was amazed at how effortlessly I was able to read this the first time I ever saw it.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I was amazed at how effortlessly I was able to read this the first time I ever saw it.

Now I know how readers of pirated books read.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Now I know how readers of pirated books read.

Huh?

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Huh?

There are a lot of OCR'ed books out there that are illegal and full of typos.

[DiapDealer]

Well, sure. I guess. I'm still unclear what that has to do with the portion of my post you quoted, though. Piracy (or readers of pirated material) has little to no bearing on discussions about how some reader's brains comprehend words as a whole. Regardless of the interior order of the letters.

Did you have any difficulty reading the jumbled passage?

[Luffy]

Not at all. I read it instinctively.

[DiapDealer]

OK. Thanks.
I certainly wouldn't want to read a book's-worth of it, but that little experiment is a perfect example of why I may not even see a lot of typos whenever I read. I'm hardly ever breaking a word down into its individual letters when I read. My brain is willing to see the correct whole word if there's enough markers/context in place to allow it to do that.